Me duele el chocho (2002)

Overview

Produced in collaboration with residents of the Las Cuevas neighbourhood in his home town (Huéscar). Valeriano is the non-gypsy who seeks their cooperation by inviting them to say Unamuno’s famous phrase before the camera – “Spain pains me” – which sums up the enlightened and sceptical spirit of the Generation of ’98, with the intention of extrapolating that phrase to a context of social exclusion that comes to an end when a Romani woman, with a great deal of transgressive humour, and at the same time natural due to the absence of bourgeois norms in this community, transfers Unamuno’s sentiment from the public to the personal by uttering, amidst the laughter of those around her, the phrase that gives the video its title and which shifts the crux of Spain’s problem to the very heart of her community, at which point disco music bursts in whilst the camera pans across the caves dug into the earth, where the natural actors of this work dwell.