Tell Me What You Eat and I Will Tell You What You Are. Everyday Life, Food and Immigration in Spanish Cinema

Abstract

In recent decades, immigration to the countries of southern Europe has become an everyday matter. In the case of Spain, recent studies indicate that the immigration flow has grown very rapidly, changing its tradition of issuing country to country receiving immigrants. This article has two objectives: first, to analyze how Spanish films depict the everyday life (Lefebvre, 1971; De Certeau, 1999; Perec, 1973 and Juan, 2008) of the immigrants who come to Europe; and second, to inquire about the importance of foods (Harris, 1992; Deveny, 2012 and Counihan and Van Esterik, 2008) in a corpus of Spanish films whose main topic is immigration: Cosas que dejé en La Habana (1997) by Manuel Guttierrez Aragon; Flores de otro mundo (1999) by Iciar Bollaín and El próximo Oriente (2006) by Fernando Colomo.