This week on Palomitas, we dive into the sunlit, sensual daydream of Belle Époque (Fernando Trueba, 1992) – with special guest Dr. Peter Watson, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds.

An Oscar-winning comedy of manners and desire, the film follows Fernando, a young army deserter in 1931, who stumbles into a rural paradise presided over by four spirited sisters. What unfolds is a wine-soaked pastoral fantasy – a bittersweet elegy for a lost “age of beauty” just before Spain’s descent into civil war.

We unpack:

• Whether the film is a utopian celebration of freedom or a dangerously embellished piece of historical amnesia.

• How its carnivalesque masquerade upends traditional gender roles and Spanish machismo.

• Why this nostalgic sex comedy became a global phenomenon and Spain’s cinematic calling card in the 1990s.

• The film’s lasting legacy: is it a poignant escape, a political fairy tale, or a little of both?

Can you rewrite history as a beautiful dream? Tune in to find out.

Scholarship cited in the episode:

Colmeiro, José F. “Paradise Found? Ana/chronic Nostalgia in Belle Époque.” Film Historia 1, no. 2 (1997): 131-40.

Davies, Ann. Penélope Cruz. Bloomsbury, 2014.

Gasta, Chad M. “(De)constructing and (Re)negotiating Identities: (Re)dressing for Carnival in Fernando Trueba's Belle Époque (1992).” Hispania 87, no. 2 (2004): 177–84.

Jordan, Barry. “Refiguring the Past in the Post-Franco Fiction Film: Fernando Trueba’s Belle Époque.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 76, no. 1 (1999): 139–56.