A survey of Spanish cinema from the 1940’s to the present. Special attention will be paid to the political, cultural, and social discourses that the films reproduce, adapt or question. This will allow an understanding of the implicit or explicit social dialogues that shaped cinematographic production in Spain from the post-civil war years, through Franco’s dictatorship, the advent of the democratic state in the 1970’s, and the economic and political crises of the 21st century. At the same time, films will be analyzed from the standpoint of their rhetoric construction, examining the specificity of cinematic language and its particular uses in each case.