The Food in contemporary Spain through NO-DO newsreel

Abstract

The NO-DO, a weekly projection of the Franco regime, created as a diffusion service of obligatory exhibition in Spanish cinemas, constitutes the greatest audiovisual historical background for the contemporary history of Spain in the 20th century. The analysis and study of these newsreels and documentaries illustrate parallel to the political and socioeconomic evolution of that time, how the process of food and nutritional transition took place. The main objective of this work was to analyse and reflect on the image that these newsreels and documentaries offered to the Spanish population on the field of nutrition and the development of the different tendencies in the diet of this period. In order to carry out this study, an extensive list of descriptors specific to the discipline of nutrition and food was drawn up so that it could serve as a tool for searching for references collected both in newsreels and in documentaries, through the web search engine of the NO-DO on-line archive that is included in the Spanish Film Library’s collection. Once the search was carried out and the exclusion criteria were applied, according to the subject of the study, there were analysed a total of 169 newsreels and 5 documentaries. The analysis of the results obtained allowed a general review of this era through the process of nutritional transition that the country experienced in these decades (1943-1981).