The Plenary of the Congress of Deputies will address this Thursday the debate on the two amendments to the entirety registered by PP and Vox against the draft Law on Cinema and Audiovisual Culture, an initiative called to replace the regulations in force since 2007 and which the sector has been demanding for years to adapt the legal framework to the transformation that the audiovisual industry has undergone.
The bill now reaches the Lower House after a prolonged process, initiated in the previous legislature and paralyzed for years by parliamentary difficulties. The proposal has managed to "survive" the early elections of 2023, the change in the head of the Ministry of Culture, and successive blockages in the Cortes.
The renewal of the Cinema Law is among the main demands of the film and audiovisual industry in recent times, especially after the approval of the General Audiovisual Communication Law, which provoked strong rejection in part of the sector due to the definition of independent producer and the distribution of financing obligations.
The reform has also been one of the repeated promises of the current Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, who since the beginning of the legislature has defended the urgency of updating a law that he considers obsolete to respond to the reality of contemporary audiovisual.
The head of Culture assured last year that the new Cinema Law would be approved before 2025, something that has not finally happened. "I am convinced that this year we will have a cinema law. I can say it, I think the conversations with all the groups are progressing well. I am convinced that it will be so," he stated in an interview on "RNE", reported by Europa Press, more than a year and a half ago.
In various public appearances and interviews, the minister has reiterated that the law is "essential" for a sector whose value chain has changed radically since 2007, with the emergence of platforms and the rise of series, barely contemplated in current regulation. In fact, the origin of the text dates back to the period when Miquel Iceta was at the head of the Ministry of Culture.
Already in 2021, the then minister Iceta presented the reform as one of the great commitments of the legislature and initially set the end of 2022 as the target date for its approval.
That same year, the Council of Ministers gave the green light to the draft bill, which introduced for the first time the term "audiovisual culture" in the title of the law and equated films and series for the purpose of access to certain public aid.
Subsequently, the bill was sent to the Courts at the end of 2022, but its processing was interrupted after the dissolution of the Chambers due to the early general election called in May 2023, when the regulation had already begun its journey in Parliament.
With the start of the new legislature, the Ministry of Culture recovered the text, although its progress was again conditioned by the complex parliamentary arithmetic.
In recent months, Urtasun has admitted on several occasions the difficulties in moving the law forward, although he has insisted on his confidence in reaching an understanding with the different groups. In the most recent weeks, the minister has increased the pressure on the Popular Party to withdraw its amendment in its entirety and allow the processing to continue.
The bill reinforces aid and guarantees for films shot in co-official languages and legally establishes the obligation to reserve 35% of production subsidies for projects headed by women.
Likewise, it reduces the minimum annual screen quota in cinemas for Spanish and European cinema from 25% to 20%, and incorporates Latin American cinema and works directed by women as a novelty, which will count double for the purpose of meeting said percentage.
In addition, the text obliges companies to respect the employment quota for people with disabilities when applicable and excludes from aid films produced by audiovisual communication service providers, those fully financed by public administrations, advertising or political propaganda content, as well as works classified as X.
Thursday's debate will be key for Congress to decide whether to reject the amendments in their entirety presented by PP and Vox and allow the bill to continue its processing, or if, on the contrary, the law gets stuck again, prolonging a legislative process initiated five years ago and which the sector itself considers a priority to adapt Spanish regulations to the current reality of the audiovisual sector.