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Ventura Pons stood as a towering figure in Catalan cinema, a prolific director whose catalog exceeded thirty films. The idea that state television should have paid homage to his enduring contribution seems obvious to many observers. There remains time for such recognition to arrive, and it would be a fitting tribute to a filmmaker whose work helped shape a regional and national cinematic voice.
The bond between Ventura Pons’s cinema and the city of Alicante proved intricate from the start. In the earliest phase, the director himself would attend screenings, bringing along his own films and turning each event into a personal showcase. This initial collaboration benefited greatly from Paco Huesca, a trusted ally and friend who helped organize those demonstrations and ensured audiences encountered Pons’s work in a direct, intimate setting. As the project matured, Vicente Espadas’s company joined the effort, enabling broader distribution and greater visibility for the films, with Lauren Films later taking charge of distributing works that carried the essence of Woody Allen’s material alongside Pons’s creations. Alicante became a yearly venue for both Ventura’s films and Allen’s—an unlikely but resonant pairing that kept the cinematic dialogue alive in the city.
By the third and final phase, however, the tide shifted. There was genuine sadness among followers of Ventura Pons in Alicante as the regular screenings dwindled. The city saw fewer new presentations, and only a couple of cinema houses, Roma in L’Alfàs and Jayán in Xàbia, managed to sustain occasional showcases of Pons’s and Allen’s films, acting as fragile anchors for cinephiles who hoped for a continuous stream of quality titles.
Reflecting on past cycles, one recalls trips to Valencia’s Babel cinemas to catch titles like El virus de la por. When the Albatross in Valencia closed, Ventura Pons, a businessman by temperament, stepped back in and revived the venues in 2017, emulating what he had done with the Texas in Barcelona. It was striking that Valencia already boasted a network of cinemas, while Alicante lacked a dedicated annual film program. A portion of Alicante’s cultural memory survived thanks to the Mediterranean Foundation Cinematheque and its Monday screening cycle, which preserved a thread of visibility for Pons’s work. The most recent project tracked by local audiences stretched into 2019, with several completed films still awaiting release in Alicante’s market.
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