“Spanish Cinema: Meeting of Cultural Identities”
Gracia M. Roldán

Abstract
Contemporary Spanish Society, through a series of historically sustained negative stereotypes, has inherited a distorted opinion of the Arab world. This artificial conception, when reinforced by mass media, tends to create uncontrolled nationalistic fanaticism fed by fear: of another “invasion”, of an alteration of the national identity, of unemployment, of terrorism, etc. Spanish cinema, which has traditionally had a biased view about North African immigration, has been producing a substantial change to a new reality built on the harsh conditions of immigration. In this work we will explore the theme of immigration in Spain, making a brief path for the Spanish movies of the last years. We will center our analysis on two films that deal with the issue of North African immigration: Retorno a Hansalaand the short film El viaje de Said. Special attention will be given at the social discourse of immigration: exclusion, difference, national identity and racism. To understand the factors that connect immigration to negative concepts such as illegality, conflict, and delinquency, requires us to conduct an identity study. As a theoretical framework we will analyze the movies based on the term “reciprocity” given by Amín Maalouf in his book In the name of identity.

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