Alegorías de miedo. El cine fantástico español en los tiempos de la Transición

The importance of horror films made in Spain has long been obscured by the greater public presence of other genres and the force that auteur cinema has had in the contexts of production in recent decades. Spanish horror cinema, however, may also boast of a tradition with important directors such as Jesús Franco, Amando de Ossorio, Paul Naschy, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador or Juan Piquer Simón. The purpose of this article is to investigate the discourses around the films of these authors, among others, produced in the aftermath of the Franco years and during the Spanish Transition involving political content, social criticism and militant attitudes, marked in allegorical styles and shaped by the coordinates of the horror genre. The research aims to determine the level of political, ideological and social criticism that these largely forgotten films contain, and which constitute an authentic history of the ‘other Spanish cinema’.