Film Policies and Film Production in Spain during the Economic Crisis (2007–2017)

Europe’s leading film-producing countries are France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. They were all hit by the global economic crisis, which had a particularly severe impact on Europe in 2010–2012. The consequences of this crisis for film policies and the film industry are understudied. Spain is a unique case for this study because it had to ask the European Union for a financial assistance programme. What changes were made to State film policies as a result of the crisis? How did those changes reflect on the feature film production? This article aims to answer these questions. The method used includes an analysis of film-industry policy documents and official data, and in-depth interviews. The period studied is 2007–2017. The results refer to topics such as State aid for film production; tax incentives; value-added tax (VAT); the obligation to provide advance funding for European audiovisual production, and the number, genre, and mean cost of the feature films produced.