The Maravillas Cinema has been the last one open in Teruel for a decade. Multicines Zamora is going to turn three as the only one left in the city. For six months in 2013, Pontevedra was the first provincial capital to be left without a cinema. The Soria City Council promoted the Mercado Cinemas so that the big screen returned to the center. The less populated Spain resists to also lose the ritual of walking to the cinema, choosing a movie, smelling the freshly made popcorn. The latest programmers manage to ensure that their cities can also see the premiere that everyone is talking about.
More than a third of Spaniards live in a municipality where this ritual no longer exists, according to the latest census of the Association for Media Research (AIMC). The majority, 15 of those more than 17 million people, live in municipalities of up to 50,000 inhabitants, but more than a million reside in cities of between 50,000 and 200,000. Badalona is above that figure and only has one cinema. Móstoles too and no longer has any. In Reus, Alcalá de Henares or Getafe, all with more than 100,000 inhabitants, only one remains. A dozen provincial capitals, in addition to the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, now only have one cinema: Huesca, Teruel, Ávila, Segovia, Zamora, Ciudad Real, Guadalajara, Pontevedra, and even Lleida and Ourense, which exceed 100,000 population.
In the least populated of the Spanish provincial capitals, Teruel, the Cinema Maravillas resists 40 years later. To his manager, Jose Ignacio Navarro, a decade ago the death of his partner coincided with the disappearance of the other remaining cinema, the Marín, when its owners retired. “I should be retired by now, I turn 70 in March, but I am self-employed, so, as long as I can climb the stairs to get to the cabin, I will continue coming,” Navarro tells infoLibre from his office. When he is asked about the relief, he says that he sees it as complicated: “People here think above all about going to a city with more possibilities, like Zaragoza or Valencia”.
The Maravillas Cinema, a former school assembly hall with 219 seats, is well located in Teruel. Those who visit it for the first time celebrate the discovery of “a cinema like the ones before.” It only has one theater and the film rotation is almost weekly. “It has to be a very powerful one to maintain it for two weeks, this is a very small city, with less than 40,000 inhabitants,” explains Navarro. “I try to get it right every week and choose the one that can make the most money, but here, no matter how much you get it right, there is not a large volume, maybe you reach 500 viewers, to double that number it has to be one of Disney or very specific films.” Navarro alternates between children’s films and adult films in its only theater. It maintains a “super cheap” price of 6.5 euros, and 5 on the day of the viewer. “We offer quality in sound and image, but the trend now is for rooms with folding seats and they are already charging nine, ten, twelve euros,” he says. The best time of the year for the Maravillas Cinema? It depends on the premiere. In 2023 it was August, with the box office Barbie y Oppenheimer.
“How are we going to run out of cinema?”
Zamora capital had 12 screens in three cinemas when the millennium changed. Since May 2021, only the five theaters of the thirty-year-old Multicines Zamora remain in the city. “Two companies could have coexisted, but with both having a hard time, habits have changed,” he tells infoLibre in a pause between projections, Alfredo Reguilon, the programming director of this family cinema. On the big dates, Christmas and summer, the day of the spectator “a single cinema cannot accommodate everyone, but there are ten days, they are not enough for the whole year,” he explains.
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Reguilón, who can tell the story of the Multiplex through premieres with precise dates, believes that “cinema has returned” after the hard blow of the pandemic, but it’s all or nothing. “Before there were many medium box office films that helped us a lot, now it either works a lot or not at all.” Being the only room in an aging and depopulated city like Zamora forces them to continually refine the strategy and restructure the programming. There is now only a session after ten on spectator day and on Friday and Saturday. “We had two or four people in each room, it is not sustainable with the costs of personnel, heating, and electricity.”, indica.
Many of the cinemas that survive in small towns can no longer open every day or offer every session. Multicines Zamora closes on Mondays and forces you to pay attention to the billboard. They need a lot of movies and a lot of rotation. They screen the big premieres, but also the critically acclaimed films and other alternative proposals. “We have always tried to bring complicated things to Zamora for a small city and the public responds“, celebrates. They conceive Tuesdays as “a cultural day”, in which premieres and other films in their original version, documentaries, operas or cycles are offered. “We put what we would like to see and at a lower price, to attract young people who are already more used to watching the original version at home,” he explains.
The entrance fee has not risen above 6 euros in the last decade, and the spectator’s day is 4. After seeing the previous cinemas disappear in this city that has dropped below 60,000 inhabitants, a frequent comment that Reguilón receives is that they have to maintain themselves. “’¿How are we going to run out of cinemas in Zamora?‘, they tell us, and that makes you feel like you have a responsibility to the city and it’s a little scary. But as long as we can and it’s not something super agonizing, we’re going to continue trying to bring the best cinema,” the programmer promises before returning to the cabin.
2024-01-22 01:12:19
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