Since a new wave of feminism brought color to all industries in 2018, measures have been taken to try to alleviate the situation of inequality between men and women. In Spanish cinema it was done quickly through public aid. Since 2018, the Ministry of Culture has been introducing measures to promote parity. First, those films with women at the head of the technical departments were awarded with extra points in film aid, a measure that was refined and later added to one of the most important, the reserve of money for films directed by women. .
Of the allocations allocated to Spanish cinema by the Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), there is a minimum percentage that must necessarily go to female directors. In the last call for selective aid, for the most auteur cinema, the approved text said that “a minimum of 40% of the budget will be allocated to projects made exclusively by female directors”, while in the general aid – the most industrial films – “A minimum of 35% is allocated for projects carried out exclusively by female directors.”
However, for RTVE this tax is lower – 30% -. Public television is obliged, by the Audiovisual Law, to “contribute annually to the advance financing of the European production of cinematographic films, films and series for television, as well as documentaries and animated films and series, with 6% of the income accrued in the previous year.” By not making public the data on the films acquired or the amount they receive, a diagnosis of equality in the cinema acquired by RTVE can never be established.
When analyzing the data obtained through the Transparency portal by elDiario.es, it is observed that there is no parity. Of the 207 films that RTVE acquired between 2020 and 2023, 132 were directed by men and 73 by women (the remaining two to reach 207 correspond to groups of filmmakers made up of both men and women). That is to say, there were 35.2% women compared to 63.7% men, in addition to 1% groups of directors where there are men and women. The monetary figure delivered is even worse. 60 million euros were given to titles directed by men and 27 million to those by female directors. Less than a third of the money went to female filmmakers. This newspaper has contacted RTVE, which did not want to respond.
The number of female directors is below what is established by the new parity law, which says that there must be at least 40% women in the power bodies of companies. Women not only receive less money overall, but also on average. The titles acquired for female directors have an average of 376,240 euros. Those of men 457,424. This becomes abundantly clear when examining the lists of the titles that have received the most money in these four years.
Among the top ten there is none directed by a woman. They are not even Alcarras neither The maternal. You have to go to number 14 to find the first film by a female filmmaker. It is about The cuckoo of Mar Targarona. At number 15, just behind, is Isabel Coixet, who with one love received 700,000 euros. Not even a director like Coixet, one of the most important figures in Spanish cinema internationally, receives the same money as her male colleagues. In these four years, no woman has surpassed RTVE’s million euros.
The lack of transparency and parity in the projects supported by RTVE has always been one of the workhorses of the Association of Women Filmmakers, CIMA. In 2021, after having chosen only six projects directed by women at its first evaluation table, its then president, Cristina Andreu, criticized precisely that RTVE “does not make public the scales by which the so-called selection committee, formed by senior officials of TVE, decides, in a single meeting, the projects that are definitively purchased.” CIMA had “repeatedly asked them for this information without receiving a response.” Therefore, they could not even know if “the mandates of the Equality Law” were being fulfilled. A criticism that Andreu repeated before the negotiations of the new Audiovisual Law a couple of years ago, when he claimed that just as linguistic limits are taken into account, gender ones should be taken into account.
The current president of the institution, Guadalupe Balaguer, explains to elDiario.es that they have met with TVE quite recently to address these issues and bring “the usual claim, to have the amount that is granted to women to see if there is differences between the amounts awarded to films directed by men and women.” The meeting was with José Pastor and Gervasio Iglesias, director and deputy director of the Fiction and Film department of the public entity since this year. They told them about a report made by RTVE and they promised to send it to them. They haven’t done it yet.
From CIMA they do not know how many films directed by women and how much money they have received from RTVE because that information is not public, hence the tagline of the “always complaint.” On this occasion they found “a lot of willingness and good will” to achieve “a demand” that they make “by air, sea and land so that it is not diluted.”
There is no parity between those who decide
The data, obtained by elDiario.es through a request for access to public information to RTVE, also indicates that those who choose these films are more men than women. It is the evaluation tables that decide which films receive money from TVE and in what amount. Nobody knows who makes them up, since there is no public document where you can consult who makes them up and it is necessary to go to Transparency to find out who was in each of those calls.
In the data from 2020 to 2023 (both included) it can be seen that, of the ten tables convened in those four courses, only once were there more women than men (in October 2021). And only on another occasion (July 2020) was it reached 50%. What is more worrying is that while during 2020 and 2021 there was always a minimum of 40% women, in the last two years the formation of these tables has gotten worse. In March 2022, the minimum was reached, with only two women and six men, 25%. During these two years, in four of the six evaluation tables, the 40% that the parity law currently establishes has not been reached. Therefore, those who choose the films financed by RTVE are more men than women, a circumstance that can influence the evaluations of the films evaluated.
For CIMA, parity in the committees is essential so that it is transferred to the selection of films and the money they receive. The association does not know the identity or the number of men and women who make up each table, one of its demands. In the recent meeting they had with RTVE, the fiction department assured them that “there was a balance”, something that the data offered for transparency contradicts. “They assured us that there was parity,” they repeat.
The associated filmmakers are against a quota to ensure the money that directors receive, but they are clear that the first step is “without a doubt, ensuring parity.” “The projects that are valued have to have a female perspective. The reading that a man does of a script is not going to be the same as that of a woman and that’s okay, we are going to share ideas and disagree on occasion, but it is important that we have a balance in points of view, for example. “Parity is essential in any committee and even more so in Spanish Television, since we are talking about public money,” they add.
To this they add the importance of “publishing the data.” “This is key and it is a claim that has been on the table for a long time. We do not fully understand the reasons why the data is not public, because we believe that if it were public it would offer a lot of security to the sector,” they ask. From Sumar they emphasize that they trust the new management of RTVE to obtain “parity and transparency”, as they propose in their electoral program.
That the claim about transparency and equality has been taking time is demonstrated by the fact that in March 2021, Sofía Castañón, Podemos deputy and deputy spokesperson on the Culture Commission, asked RTVE a question about it. Castañón remembers that at that time they were already concerned about what would later become the new Audiovisual Law.
“In this context of concern, I remember that, based on many conversations with the presidency of CIMA, everything that has to do with compliance with Law 3/2007 on Equality was detected, which is a law that will be made within 20 years is worth nothing and it is flagrantly breached by the administrations. This is what is called soft law. There is no type of compensation, although it is true that it is increasingly socially penalized,” explains Castañón. He also trusts that the new management of RTVE will address this issue that remains entrenched without anyone taking action on the matter.
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