In the late 1980s I came across two short appearances dedicated to Enrique Domínguez Rodino and Fernando Viola Sanchez, the two born in Jerez de la Frontera, and the only ones, together with Lola Flores, with the same origin referred to in the work of Fernando Vizcaino Casas, ‘Dictionary of Spanish Cinema’ (1970).
Little else had been written about them, if we ignore the press articles of the 1930s and 1940s; and the mention of Domínguez Rodiño, a little more complete, in the Great Encyclopedia of Andalusia, published in 1979.
Information I used in the citations I made of it for the Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary of the province of Cadiz (1985) and the General Encyclopedia of Andalusia (2004).
A little more complete were the ones I prepared for the Spanish Biographical Dictionary of the Royal Academy of History (2011-2013).
In this process of collecting new data on these two people from Jerez, linked to the culture and the national film industry, I had two fundamental collaborators, one was Purple Hope, daughter of Fernando Viola, and the other Mauricio Dominguez-Adame, grandson of Domínguez Rodiño, for many years head of the Protocol Service of the Municipality of Seville.
Part of the documentation provided by these relatives was donated to the funds of the Municipal Library of Jerez.
More than thirty years have passed since a series of articles published in this same newspaper on Domínguez and Viola, so this Rebusco aims to update their biographies, providing previously unpublished data and graphic material.
I invite you to enjoy this double session.
Enrique Domínguez Rodiño, the man of the CEA
Our first character was born in Jerez de la Frontera on July 30, 1887, although some sources, by mistake, make him Sevillian or even Galician.
All his life he worked as a journalist, reporter, writer, translator and film producer.
From his early years to his departure for Germany in 1911, it is a little known period in his life. For this we must consult the data you provide us Mario Mendez Bejarano in his “Dictionary of Writers, Teachers and Orators of Seville and its current province”, published in 1925.
From the outbreak of the First World War, in the summer of 1914, until its end, he will work as a correspondent for the newspaper ‘La Vanguardia’.
Part of these chronicles will take the form of a book in 1917 entitled ‘The first flames. Diary of a witness-chronicler of the war ‘, a work that will be republished by Renacimiento in 2015.
Writer Eva Diaz Perez in the prologue he will write: ‘Rodiño is an example of modern and narrative journalism that began in Spain at the turn of the century. A journalist with whom Spain has an unfinished business and whose figure is now saved as an example of a generation of daring Spaniards who wrote with the mud of history at their heels’.
Once the war was over, Rodiño remained in Berlin as a reporter for “El Imparcial”, which allowed him to travel to the Baltic countries to try to cover the Russian revolution. During a tour of the Republic of Latvia, he discovered the tomb of Ángel Ganivet in Riga, whose remains he managed to repatriate to Spain.
Meanwhile, in 1915, he married the Frenchwoman Passier in Geneva, with whom he would have two children.
Back in Spain, he held the position of manager of “El Imparcial” and director of the “Los Lunes” supplement, of which he was responsible until 1925. In the same year he returned to Germany as a press and culture officer at the Spanish embassy in Berlin. , a position he held at the same time as correspondent for ‘La Voz’ and general curator of the Barcelona International Exhibition for Germany and the Scandinavian countries.
In 1933, already in Spain, he was appointed administrative director and managing director of the film production company CEA (Cinematografía Española Americana), in which he was vice president from 1935 to 1965.
In those years, in 1935, he founded the Spanish-German company Hispania Tobis, with the aim of distributing Tobis’s films in Spain and, in turn, selling CEA productions in Germany.
Domínguez Rodiño was also involved in the making of documentaries and writing screenplays, and some other literary works, among which we remember: “Rocío, La Pilares” (1924), “Carlota knew he had no heart” (1924), and “The Green Ray” (1924).
For his diplomatic work he received various decorations from the governments of Spain, Morocco and Germany, such as the Grand Cross of Merit, which he received from the hands of the German ambassador to Spain in 1964.
He will die in Fuenterrabía (Guipúzcoa), on July 17, 1974, the usual place of his summer holidays.
Fernando Viola Sánchez, more than just a cinephile
The other compatriot linked to cinema, but from another point of view, was born in Jerez in 1897.
In his professional life he worked as a lawyer, specializing in insurance, journalist and film critic. Even as an occasional actor.
In his hometown he made his first studies which he did at the San Pablo School and at the Provincial Institute of Jerez until in 1917 he started in the world of cinema as an actor.
During the shooting in Jerez of the film ‘La España trágica’ (1917), by Raffaele Salvatore, coincides with the one who was his friend and fellow student, Antonio Calvacco.
In 1925 he moved to Madrid to expand his academic training, where he graduated in law.
At that time, from 1926 to 1927, he would be the commercial director of the news program Ediciones Cinematográficos de la Nación, which had repercussions in Spain and America, with Manuel Noriega as artistic director.
With Calvache, former director, he will participate in several of his films: ‘The girl with the cat’ (1926) and ‘The victors of death’ (1927), and years later, in 1940, in ‘Boy’, as seen in the photo attached.
During the II Congress of Spanish Overseas Commerce, held in Seville during the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, he presented the idea of holding a congress on cinema where the countries of Latin America were present.
After solving a multitude of political and administrative problems caused by regime change in Spain, he was elected general secretary of the 1st Spanish-American Congress of Cinematography and a member of the group representing Spain. The congress took place in Madrid from 2 to 12 October 1931. Unfortunately, the ambitious intentions of the congress were thwarted by the unstable situation that the Second Republic experienced in the following years.
During the Civil War he was jailed several times, was even sentenced to death on charges of espionage, but finally released in 1939 when the rebel army took Barcelona.
After the war he married in San Sebastián with Maria Teresa Aristiguieta Olasagasti, from whose union two daughters would be born.
Assuming the legal and economic knowledge acquired on South American countries, he will hold various official positions related to cinema, as permanent secretary of the Spanish-American Film Union (UCHA) and director of the Ibero-American Film Institute (ICIA). , being at the same time responsible for the station’s film program, in short wave, EAQ Transradio Española for America.
In the Spanish film industry, he worked as a production manager on films such as ‘Ana María’ (1940), by King Florian, and “Forced Arrival” (1943), by Carlos Arevaloas well as directing the documentary ‘Jerez, jewel of Andalusia’ in 1940.
In 1945, together with a group of eminent film and historical critics, he created the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos (CEC), of which he was the first president and whose association is still active.
He has also been involved in the creation of various cineforums, such as the CEC, the Grupo de Escritores Cinematográficos Independientes (GECI) and Cinestudio 33. In all his work around cinema, the figure of his brother, Manuel Viola, will be of great support, as well as an indispensable collaborator.
Already in the 1950s, for personal and family reasons, he fully dedicated himself to his profession as an insurance officer, and stock and economic affairs consultant at Diario Madrid until retirement, detaching himself from everything related to cinema until his death. in Madrid, in September 1977.
His published works include titles such as’ Cinematographic Production ‘(1929),’ Towards a Hispano-American Congress of Cinematography ‘(1930),’ Hispano-American Congress of Cinematography (1932), ‘La cinematografía y las relations Hispanoamericanas’ (1932) ‘Hispanic cinema before the new organization of the Spanish Treasury, in Revista de las Españas (1935), and Implementation of sound and speech cinema in Spain (1956).
cinema historian, Roman Guberno, said of him that he was a “key character” and, for his part, Mendez-Leite, claimed to be “a good film writer”.
Final note
In November 1997, the city council of Jerez, at the proposal of the cultural association Cine-Club Popular de Jerez, approved the labeling of two streets with their names, one behind the IES Padre Luis Coloma and the other in Torres de Córdoba.
