Saturday night, or Tuesday afternoon, at the movies

I've always liked going to the pictures, to the cinema. It's not just the film but the experience. It's true you can see the pictures and hear the words on Netflix or Apple TV, or even on the broadcast telly, but it's hardly the same. The cinema is total immersion, a darkened room with one focus of attention, and a screen that dwarfs even the largest television screen. I also like that it involves popping out of British territory and into Spain.

I used to go to the pictures in the UK too. A huge advantage that we Britons have, in relation to film viewing, is that we speak English. This means that the films produced by the US film makers aren't seen as being foreign, even though they are. Italian and French and Iranian films, those that come with subtitles are foreign. I don't think I ever saw a dubbed film in a cinema in the UK, foreign films always came with subs. Not so in Spain. Here nearly all foreign language films (which obviously embraces Hollywood product) are dubbed. Historically films in Spain were dubbed because of high illiteracy rates, because of the work it provided and because it allowed what was said on screen to be controlled and censored. Now it's just a sort of tradition or expectation. 

Dubbing and subtitling still change the words in foreign films (and TV series). It's no longer a political or church censorship but words are sometimes changed to reflect a Spanish worldview - a BLT becomes a cheese sandwich for example. Hearing Colin O'Farrell or Margot Robbie speak with a Spanish accent is unnerving: even more so when the voice is a particularly recognisable one like Samuel L. Jackson or Morgan Freeman. The same dubbing artist usually sticks with the same star for the whole of their career and some dubbing artists are quite famous. The same voice artist may do more than one actor. The Spanish voice of Cillian Murphy, Ethan Hawke and Leonardo di Caprio is David Robles for instance. One of the strangest things is when a Spanish actor makes an English language film because, when the film is shown in Spain, their Spanish voices will be dubbed back into Spanish by a voice actor. It is quite surreal to hear well known actors, like Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem or Penelope Cruz, speaking Spanish but with someone else's voice.

My film count in 2023 was 59 films in cinemas: 31 of them in English and 28 in Spanish. Seven so far this year. For me the films dubbed into Spanish, from say English or Norwegian, tend to be easier to understand than a film shot originally in Spanish. Equally some sorts of Spanish language films are easier to understand than others - anything with low life criminals is going to be, for me, much harder than a family comedy. Films with Latin American roots, particularly from the deep South, like Uruguay and Argentina, I find particularly difficult.

There is no cinema to speak of in Pinoso. In summer there are a couple of outdoor films and on most of the first Fridays of the month the Pinoso Platform Against Gender Violence shows a film in the Local Associations' building, the old Casa de Cultura, but if you want to see a film that is doing the rounds then you are going to have to travel.

The closest cinema is probably the Cine PYA in Yecla but the PYA, interesting cinema though it is, isn't really what you'd call a modern cinema experience. For that the nearest cinema is the ten screen Yelmo Vinalopó, next door to the Carrefour supermarket. There was another cinema in Petrer but the pandemic did for it. The Vinalopó seems to have stopped getting anything but the potentially most profitable films and recently it hasn't even been getting the mid range Spanish films. Prices vary a lot from day to day and depend on whether you can get any form of discount. I usually pay around 6.50€ but I get pensioner rates. Even at its most expensive I don't think the Vinalopó gets over 9€ for a ticket. On Tuesdays the Vinalopó, like all cinemas in the Yelmo chain, shows films in Versión Original Subtitulado en Español (VOSE) - original language with Spanish subtitles. Usually that means English with subs but not always. Bear in mind that the Italians and Koreans make films too and they usually make them in their home language. One of the, often unexpected, difficulties with VOSE films is that if even if it's basically an English language film there may be sections in, say, German or Arapaho, and the subtitles for that will be in Spanish for a Spanish audience. 

There's another Yelmo on the outskirts of Alicante, on the Pinoso side, at the very "white elephant" Puerta de Alicante shopping centre. That Yelmo does get most of the Spanish films that are doing the rounds but it gets almost none of the even vaguely arty Spanish films. To be honest though if I'm going to go a bit further to see a film I'd go to the ABC, in the L'Aljub shopping Centre in Elche, simply because it has a better selection of films. Prices at the ABC are a bit higher than at the Yelmo, partly because they are in a successful shopping centre, but there are offers. Their "day of the viewer" tickets, on Wednesday, are just over 6€ but their regular price is nearly 9€. The ABC has it's VOSE films on Thursday. All of the cinema chains have websites where you can buy online so you can check prices. Sometimes, often, web prices are better than the box office prices. 

There are a couple of single screen cinemas in Alicante city, in the Centre, the most reliable being aAna which tends to the non blockbuster films that are doing well. In Elche there's an arthouse cinema, the Odeon, which is dead cheap.

There are plenty more cinemas which are a bit further from Pinoso and I'm not going to try and list them all but I will mention the ones we occasionally go to. Kinepolis in Plaza Mar 2 is on the wrong side of Alicante for us but it has a pretty full programme and they have English language stuff on several days of the week. Going the other way there are cinemas in the shopping centres outside Murcia - The Thader - next to IKEA - has a Neocine which is a local Murcian chain. Neocine leans towards popular rather than arty films as does the Cinesa in the much more popular Nueva Condomina - the one with Primark - shopping centre. There are a couple more Neocines in Murcia City and there is also an arthouse cinema, the Filmoteca, quite near the Cathedral. 

Plenty to go at even if they are a little way away.

But no popcorn

Going to the pictures in Spain is a bit sad at the moment. The cinemas are just so quiet. The reports say 35% down on pre pandemic figures. I suppose that when everyone was locked in their homes they subscribed to Apple TV or Netflix or Filmin. At that time the film makers and distributors thought, well, if anyone is going to see my film then I have to put it on HBO or Amazon Prime or the Disney Channel and the rest. So film making is healthy enough, lots of product, but with many releases going direct to platforms or having very short cinema runs.

Although I go to the flicks a lot, I go at unpopular times. Not for me the crush of Saturday evening but, more usually, the peace of Tuesdays. Even then the fall off in numbers is noticeable. I've been in cinemas where, so far as I can tell, there are no other customers in the whole building. Tuesday is favourite because the nearest cinema to Culebrón, the Yelmo in Petrer, does its original language films then. It's become a habit so when there's nothing any good in English but something worthwhile in Spanish then Tuesday is still favourite. The exception is when the Yelmo has nothing worth watching. The ABC down in Elche often has a better range and their cheap day is Wednesday so that's when I go. Given the choice I go for the early showings, the ones at 4.30 or 5pm, which isn't a popular time for anything outside the home in Spain. This week we went to the Yelmo in Alicante for the 7.30pm show and the place was quieter - much quieter - than your average Spanish funeral parlour. Bear in mind that lots of the larger tanatorios, the funeral parlours, have 24 hour bar service.

I spent a lot of my early years in a town in West Yorkshire called Elland. There was a chip shop called Kado. I forget the detail but I remember that it was foundering. As it failed the price went down, then up, then there were the strange menu combinations - pineapple fritters with curry sauce - and all sorts of buy one get two free type offers. It's been a bit like that at the Yelmo cinema recently. I've paid as little as 4.50€ and as much as 6.20€ on the same day of the week and with the same pensioner discount. There's always some sort of offer on - this week it was the Black Friday effect. Full price, at the Yelmo, on a Saturday is still only 8.20€ or 8.80€ at the Elche ABC.

I don't really mind the price. I'm pleased to say that a couple of euros isn't a deal breaker and going to the cinema always seems like a cheap night out. Well unless you eat popcorn and drink fizzy pop. Do that and look out for those arms and legs. The Yelmo's "menu" offer, for what I think is the medium sized salty popcorn (sweet costs 50c more) and a 50cl pop, is 9.45€.

Most of the cinemas are part of a shopping centre. I often feel for the cinemas that chose the wrong shopping centre. The Thader Centre in Murcia is a bit of a White Elephant so the Neocine there is a lot less popular than the Cinesa place across the road in the very successful Nueva Condomina. In fact the Regional Murcian chain of Neocines has chosen two other failed shopping centres in Murcia city and Cartagena. The Cinesmax in the Bassa El Moro, now Dynamia, shopping centre in Petrer died along with the centre and the Puertas de Alicante shopping centre in Alicante, where there's a yelmo cinema, is another Mary Celeste type operation. 

All of the shopping centre cinemas are just like multiplex everywhere. They have multiple screens and thin walls and VERY LOUD sound. Most of their theatres are relatively small but they'll have a couple of decent sized theatres for the more popular films. If you've been to the Odeon in Maidenhead or the Showcase in Springdale, Ohio then you will be at home in the Multicines Al-andalus in Cádiz. There are still a few of the older style, one big screen, cinemas left. There's one in Yecla, the PYA, for instance where the seats are raked back at the front of the theatre and raked forward at the back. They still give you tickets torn in half too rather than something you buy online or on the app on your phone. Cines Ana in Alicante is very similar.

Nearly all the films in Spanish cinemas are in Spanish, either as the original soundtrack or with dubbing. Sometimes, when I come out of a cinema having failed to grasp most of the linguistic nuances, I'm more than a tad cross with myself and a bit disappointed. It's not the same at the start of the film. I've seen thousands of pictures but when the lights go down and the film starts there is always that thrill, that moment of anticipation, something I never get watching a film on telly.

Hooked to the silver screen

I have innumerable stories about going to the cinema. I started young and I'm still adding to the store. As an eleven year old I marvelled as my Auntie Lizzie sobbed while watching The Sound of Music. When I was fourteen my dad insisted that we went to a bigger cinema in Leeds to get the full Cinerama effect of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was well over 30 when I tried some sort of gruel that Poles prefer to popcorn as I watched a Swedish film with French subtitles in a Warsaw cinema. In Banjul I wondered if the running and shouting antics of the audience for a Kung Fu film would turn violent. As a student in the 1970s I recall scraping together enough loose change to see Last Tango in Paris with someone who really thought it was about dancing. In Madrid, in the early 80s, I sat, rifle-less, on a grassy knoll one August evening for cinema in the park. Hooking the speakers over the wound down car windows at a drive-in in Pennsylvania. Delighting in seeing season after season of black and white classics as they should be seen, on a big screen, at the Regent in Leeds. In fact, to this day, every time I see Big John twirling that Winchester and flagging down the Stage I'm reminded of the red plush of the Regent. Then there was that bloke who came to sit next to me as I watched Robocop in a huge, and almost empty theatre, in Mexico DF and asked me, in Spanish, what had happened so far. The gentle strangeness of the Cambridge Arts Cinema in the Market Passage or the time Timothy Spall sat next to us as we waited at the new Cambridge Arts. Laughing as the neighbour from No7 tried to keep his head down so we wouldn't recognise him as we watched the re-release of Deep Throat at Elland Rex. The planning that went in to seeing four films at four cinemas in one day at the London Film Festival and still getting back home on the last train. Knowing enough of French etiquette to tip the usherette in Paris as we watched the first Emmanuelle or those splendidly solitary evenings at the Grand in Ramsey with a beer and a cigar. I'd better stop now but, literally, tens more spring to mind. Just before I stop though special mention for the exit from a cinema here in Spain, in Ciudad Rodrigo, that went through the Bishop's Palace.

From home in Culebrón our regular cinema became the Cinesmax in Petrer about 25 km away. It was a second tier cinema so, instead of getting the Hollywood and Spanish first run releases, it programmed art house and foreign films. The staff called us by name and we asked after their children's exam results. The Yelmo, across the road from the Cinesmax in Petrer, also attracted our attention when they started to show films in English. We became regulars. It all went phut, of course, because of the virus. The Cinesmax, which must have been struggling anyway, has been closed for over a year now. The Petrer Yelmo hung on, valiantly, for a while, then tried reduced opening times before closing for a spell. They are due to re-open today. The same chain kept another cinema in Alicante open a little longer. When the Yelmo closed we discovered the Kinepolis, also in Alicante and also with English language films; they closed that too. Finally there was just the ABC in Elche left. That had been our mainstay this year until it too gave up the unequal struggle. 

With all our closest cinemas closed it looked like our film going was going to have to wait for better times. Google told me the cinema in Torrevieja was still open but travelling 90 kilometres smacked of desperation. Google is a wonderful thing though and, on Tuesday, I discovered the Cinemas Aana in Alicante. It's a small chain with three cinemas and they are soldiering on. 

There's a programme on Spanish TV called Cine del Barrio, which shows Spanish B Movies from the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. If you're British think of the Doctor in the House series or the Carry On films and you have the idea. The films, and the cinemas they were shown in, were the stuff that turned Spain into a cinema going nation. The Cine Aana was cast in that mould. It is not like the majority of cinemas that I've gone to for the past thirty or forty years. It does have three screens but basically it's the one bedroomed house described as a three bed. The main bedroom is fine but the two smaller bedrooms only have space for single beds and no wardrobe. The cinema seats weren't raked, as they are in most multiplex cinemas in a football stadium style, they were tilted backwards so that we were looking up towards the screen.

I'm not sure if it was the special, Wednesday, price or the location but there were a reasonable number of people, widely spaced as you may imagine with the restrictions, for the screening of the French Canadian film, Il pleuvait des oiseaux. Like the majority of non Spanish films it was dubbed into Spanish. The event was very neighbourhood and very Spanish despite the foreign film. The majority of the spectators were older women, in pairs, but there were plenty of men too. The man who turned up ten minutes after the film had started and as well as having trouble with numbers seemed unable to understand the difference between left and right and had a very loud voice. We thought the film was good but the man on the other side of the aisle wasn't that impressed; his snoring was an obvious critique. 

From my point of view the seats were comfy and we were seeing a film up there, larger than our imagination, and that made it all alright.