Entertainment venues, spatial relations and the rise of cinema in early twentieth-century Madrid

Abstract

Abstract By the turn of the twentieth century, the geography of public entertainment in Madrid allowed and promoted the flow of audiences from high-class theatres and cafes to lower-class venues. As a result, theatres and movie theatres started copying and including successful elements and acts from competing shows to attract the audience. This article will focus on two elements which set the conditions for the rise of Spanish film as hegemonic spectacle: the spatial proximity of different entertainment options in downtown Madrid and the creation of a homogeneous audience through the erasure of differences between venues and shows due to the competition for spectators. Within this context and through the adaptation and incorporation of elements from other popular and successful genres, Spanish film will establish itself as an independent spectacle, with its own strategies of representation and venues, in the early 1930s.