The Long Holidays of ‘36

A few months after the death of Franco, a film premiered that was part of the necessary re-examination of Spain’s 20th-century history, particularly of the Francoist regime, which had long repeated its portrayal of the Civil War as a “liberation” from the chaos of the Republic.  The Long Holidays of ’36 was one of the first films to adopt the perspective of the defeated, who the dictatorship had criminalized as “anti-Spain”. Its release in July 1976 had a significant impact, as it virtually marked the beginning of a shift in the narrative surrounding the war and the Francoist regime.

With this film, director Jaime Camino, a native of Barcelona born just a month before the outbreak of the coup that marked the beginning of the civil war, initiated, perhaps unintentionally, a cycle dedicated to that period: the documentary The Old Memory (1978), Dragon Rapide (1986), The Long Winter (1992), and The Children of Russia (2001).

Camino depicts how the war divides society—and even families—into the two Spains evoked by Antonio Machado, whom the film quotes. It does not delve into the causes or ideological debates and is virtually devoid of battle scenes. Instead, the narrative centers on the children, one of whom experiences the transition to adulthood and a sexual awakening over the course of the conflict. A child himself during the harsh postwar years of the 1940s, Camino recalls in this story the sadness of family environments poisoned by fascist intolerance and the early stages of the improvised exile faced by those who would have ended up in prison had they not fled the country.

Set in a Catalan village where a bourgeois family from the capital spends their summer holidays, the film begins with the outbreak of the war and ends with the desolate images of their march into exile. Contrary to the usual narrative arc, the story grows increasingly somber as it progresses: the deaths of family members are revealed, political positions become more polarized, and shortages reach the point where people fight over food. The leisurely summer break turns into a cruel journey for both children and adults; from carefree play and the enjoyment of nature, they descend into an atmosphere of homo homini lupus—man is a wolf to man.

The film features a carefully selected cast of highly capable actors and achieved notable distribution, drawing over a million viewers to theaters. Seen today, certain scenes may come across as somewhat didactic, but the experiences of the children and the brutal impact of the military coup remain powerfully relevant.

JLSN