This week on Palomitas, we get tangled in a web of desire, ham, and hyper-masculinity with Bigas Luna's outrageously provocative 1992 comedy-drama, Jamón jamón – so good they named it twice. We're joined by special guest Prof. Santiago Fouz Hernández, Professor of Iberian Studies & Film at Durham University and author of the definitive new study, The Films of Bigas Luna (Manchester University Press, 2025).

Set in the arid Monegros region, the film follows Silvia (Penélope Cruz), a young factory worker pregnant by the wealthy but immature José Luis (Jordi Mollà). His domineering mother, Conchita (Stefania Sandrelli), hires the virile Raúl (Javier Bardem) – a ham warehouse worker and aspiring bullfighter – to seduce Silvia away. What ensues is a frenetic, darkly comic, and visually excessive exploration of sex, class, consumerism, and the clichés of Spanish identity.

We unpack:

• 1992, ”Spain's Year”: How the film's release the year of the Barcelona Olympics and Seville Expo – a moment of aggressive nation-branding – shapes its satirical bite. Was Bigas Luna holding up a mirror or a funhouse mirror to the ”new” Spain?

• Masculinity in Crisis: Raúl (the ”macho ibérico”) vs. José Luis (the infantilised ”niño bien”). How both are performances, both are commodified, and both ultimately destructive.

• The Gaze: From Conchita reviewing underwear audition tapes to José Luis voyeuristically watching Raúl and Silvia, how does the film complicate the traditional male gaze through commercial and maternal looking?

• Food as Metaphor: Why jamón becomes everything – commodity, weapon, aphrodisiac, and national signifier. And yes, we discuss the legendary ham bone duel, directly citing Goya's Duelo a garrotazos.

Scholarship cited in the episode:

Fouz-Hernández, Santiago. The Films of Bigas Luna. Manchester University Press, 2025.

Fouz-Hernández, Santiago, and Alfredo Martínez-Expósito. Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema. I.B. Tauris, 2007.

Hilborn, Matthew. Film Comedy and Spain: Humour, Genre, and the Nation 1970-2020. Legenda, 2025. [Chapter 3 on Bigas Luna's Iberian Trilogy]

Jordan, Barry, and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas. Contemporary Spanish Cinema. Manchester University Press, 1998.

Kinder, Marsha. Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain. University of California Press, 1993.

And for the episode of Santiago's own podcast, 'El legado cinematográfico de Bigas Luna', on Jamón jamón, which also features our host Matthew Hilborn, ⁠click here⁠ (in Spanish).