The filmmaker Pere Portabella tells a masterful anecdote of Luis Buñuel in his memoir Impugnar les norms, which demonstrates the importance of knowing how to make a virtue out of necessity, following the filming of Viridiana, which would win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The editorial in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano turned out to be a furious attack on the film. In fact, Franco’s censorship had forced the ending to be changed.
The general director of Cine, José Muñoz Fontán, had told Buñuel that there was a problem in passing the censorship bar: “You will not deny me that, when in the final scene of the film the young novice in nightgown goes to her attractive cousin’s room and he invites her in and closes the door behind her as the word end comes out, anyone can think badly of what can happen behind the door”. Buñuel was speechless, until the general director offered a solution to unblock the situation: “Make it clear that, if there was another person when the young novice entered the room, since there were three there would no longer be problem”. The director applauded the suggestion to replace the scene for two with a ménage à trois, where the novice (Silvia Pinal), the cousin (Paco Rabal) and the maid (Margarita Lozano) appeared. Portabella says that everyone understood that it was a much brighter ending.
This is a clear case of how necessity can be turned into a virtue, more or less what Pedro Sánchez is doing with that dominical group of the extreme right, with Javier Milei as the protagonist. The Spanish president thinks that the clash with the ultras could be the best shocker in the face of the next European elections. The speeches of its leaders in the Plaza de Toros de Vista Alegre, with an indescribable Santiago Abascal clamoring to “kick out and beat up the coalition Government”, have served not only to stir up the ranks of the ‘left, but also to mobilize the moderates. There is no harm that does not come for good.
In any case, they must know how to find the tone of the replies and the narrative of the threats. Lest it happen to them like the ingenious José Muñoz Fontán, whose brilliant idea he had did not protect him from dismissal.
