Policies and Cinephilia: The First Three Decades of the Spanish National Film Archives Filmoteca

abstract: The article examines the history of the Spanish National Film Archives, Filmoteca, from its inception in 1953 until its institutional stabilization in the 1980s. Filmoteca was an official body, integrated within the Spanish state, both during the dictatorship and in the democratic years that followed. But it was also—and this is the interpretation that this article highlights—an institution deeply intertwined with the possibilities and limitations of the Spanish film culture of the time. State policies, cinephile activism, individual engagement, and governmental intervention came together to shape its history and especially its institutional reinvention during the 1970s.