Rocío

Fernando Ruiz Vergara’s 1980 documentary Rocío is the first film to be seized and legally banned in Spain after the abolition of Francoist censorship in 1977 and the approval of the 1978 Constitution. Public screenings of its original version remain prohibited throughout Spanish territory to this day.

This feature-length documentary meticulously dissects the phenomenon of the El Rocío pilgrimage (Huelva) from anthropological, social, and historical perspectives, exposing the interests and involvement of the Church, landowners, and political powers in this massive Marian pilgrimage. Rocío was a pioneering film in denouncing fascist crimes during the Spanish Civil War, as it identified the leaders of the repression carried out by the insurgents in Almonte—the town where the pilgrimage takes place—and recovered the identities of some of the hundred people murdered there during those events. It was precisely this denunciation that, during the Spanish transition to democracy and with Franco’s death still recent, made the film a victim of one of the clearest attacks on freedom of expression in democratic times.

Rocío faced obstacles from the very start of its distribution: in addition to the hostile climate generated by the conservative press and the boycott by Andalusian exhibitors, the sons of a landowner and former mayor of Almonte during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, who was identified in the documentary as one of the instigators of the murders, filed a criminal complaint in February 1981. The charges included serious defamation, blasphemy against the Catholic religion, and public offense against the ceremonies in honor of the Virgin of El Rocío. 

The Provincial Court of Seville seized the film, and a year later, in 1982, a trial was held that ended with director Fernando Ruiz Vergara being convicted of defamation and sentenced to two months in prison and a fine. The ruling also prohibited the distribution and public screening of the documentary throughout Spanish territory unless three segments referring to the Almonte crimes were removed. In 1984, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence after an appeal was filed by the parties involved. The film was re-released in 1985 with intertitles inserted by the director to replace the censored footage, thereby making the censorship visible.

The Francoist remnants within the judicial system and the lack of institutional support from the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) and Socialist governments ultimately sealed Rocío’s fate. Ruiz Vergara’s film stands as a paradigmatic example of the silencing imposed during the Transition on critical and dissenting voices within the realm of cultural production.

CB