Some years ago, the people of San Rafael in Segovia saw how the modest clothing and military uniforms of the post war returned to their small town for several weeks. At that time, the young Ofelia escaped through the woods to let her imagination race while hiding from Carmen, her sick mother, and Vidal, her stepfather, a ruthless Francoist captain. There she plunged into the pines to meet Pan, a fantastic creature that led her in a parallel world in which she had to prove her bravery as a princess. These events occurred at the site located in the Sierra de Guadarrama, because this was the place was chosen by the Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro, as the stage for the mov

What would Woody Allen’s filmography be like if there was no New York? And Sergio Leone’s without the Tabernas desert in Almería? Very different, I'm sure.  The same could be said of Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography without Madrid. Neither Pepi, nor Luci, nor Bom, nor any other ‘girl of the heap’ would have any reason for being without the background of their truculent lives in the Madrid of the ‘Movida’ (counter cultural movement in Madrid during the transition to democracy). In fact, many consider that films like those led by these characters are the documentaries that best reflect the movement (of course Almodóvar has

  It happened in 1958 when Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida strolled in the desert that then surrounded the city of Zaragoza. The locators, the cinema experts who found real places and made them fictitious saw the ideal place in these virgin and barren lands for King Vidor to film Salomon and the Queen of Saba. Fifty years later, that filming is still giving its fruit. Far from a desert, the estate that now occupies these lands has become a homage to the film.       “Take me to Mary Poppins Square”. This is just one of the many phrases that taxi drivers of Zaragoza hear when a customer from the Valdespartera district wants to go home.