The recent moment of Spanish cinema bibliography has a distinctly sweet aroma. In a short span, independent bookstore shelves have welcomed volumes that once sounded almost fanciful in premise. Edited with care and placed in context, these projects resurrect scripts or unrealized roles from films imagined by some of Spain’s most celebrated directors. Within a year, a devoted fanbase has kept these treasures circulating. Works like Gallop and Cut the Wind (Free for Children, 2022), Long Live Russia! (Nuggets, 2022), and Return to Calle Mayor (Pepitas, 2022) stand out as products born from the minds of Eloy de la Iglesia, Luis García Berlanga, and Juan Antonio Bardem, respectively. The centenaries of key cinematic figures such as Berlanga, Fernando Fernán Gómez, and José Luis López Vázquez have filled shelves with both joy and scholarly promise, while the quirky volume La Codorniz, finished after years of anticipation by Santiago Aguilar and Felipe Cabrerizo, finally reached readers. From magazine to screen and back again (Cátedra, 2019), this marks perhaps the high point of homeland cinema studies for a contemporary reader. Aguilar, among others, contributed one of the year’s notable books, Zoom a Lazaga (The Abbey Library / Vial Books, 2022), a pioneering, thorough, and immensely entertaining survey of life and filmography. Pedro Lazaga, a pillar among the ten or twelve most influential writers in Spain’s cinematic memory, remains indispensable to the country’s cinema history.
