Silent era

Segundo de Chomón is considered the pioneer of Spanish animation, with the stop-motion shorts he made in France for Pathé starting with La maison hantée (1907).

An animated sequence within family footage on the First Communion of a child called Mercedes Cura is thought to be the first piece of animation made in Spain. For a long time El toro fenómeno (Fernando Marco, 1917), which was lost, was considered the first Spanish animated production, but nowadays El apache de Londres, also lost, is thought to date from 1915, and thus the centenary of Spanish animation was held in 2015.^[1]

They were immediately followed by other shorts, including political satires.^[2] Starting in 1917 with La apertura de las Cortes: Dato no entiende de indirectas animated sketches were included in newsreels, and that same year Joaquín Xaudaró, the best known Spanish animator from the interwar period, made his first film, Las aventuras de Jim Trot, and in 1920 he created the first Spanish sci-fi-themed animated film, La fórmula del Doctor Nap.

In 1932 Xaudaró founded SEDA, the first animation production company in the country, and the directed its first film, Un drama en la costa, which turned out to be his last film as he died in 1933. The company outlived him briefly, producing three more films: El rata primero, Francisca, la mujer fatal and Serenata. En los pasillos del Congreso, a satire of the Second Republic's politics, was left unfinished. By then other cartoonists were experimenting with animation on their own, like José Escobar with La rateta que escrombrara l'escaleta.

Stop-motion was introduced in Spanish animation by Salvador Gijón in 1935, with Sortilegio vacuno and Españolada. It seemed to catch on, and three films (El intrépido Raúl, Pipo y Pipa en busca de Cocolín and Arte, amor y estacazos) were created by different teams in the following year's first months, but the Civil War's outbreak put a halt to all animated productions.

Classic era

Spain's first animated feature, Garbancito of La Mancha (1945), was the first European cel-animated and non-American color one, using Dufaycolor.^[3] It was a fairy tale where an orphan child loosely based in Don Quixote has to save his friends from a giant with the help of his fairy godmother and goat. Its production company, Balet y Blay, made two more features: Happy Vacations (1948) and The Dreams of Tay-Pi (1952).

Through the 1950 new companies were created. Estudios Moro and Estudios Vara produced the main features in subsequent stages of the Francoist era: The Wizard of Dreams (1966) and The Wardrobe of Time (1971). Cruz Delgado, a Moro animator, created his own studio and directed Magical Adventure (1973), while Manuel García Ferré, who had moved to Argentina, created there features such as The Adventures of Hijitus (1973) and Trapito (1975).

At the later stages of this period underground animation took shape, including the first abstract direct cameraless feature ever, José Antonio Sistiaga's Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren (1970), and during the transition to democracy the first Spanish feature restricted for adults was released: Stories of Love and Massacre (1979).

Modern era

In the 1980s the feature production was diversified under the new autonomous system and films based in the local traditions were produced, such as The Magic Pumpkin (Juan Bautista Berasategi, 1985) in Euskadi and Despertaferro (Jordi Amorós, 1990) in Catalonia. "Katy The Caterpillar" (1984) was a coproduction with Mexico and The Town Musicians of Bremen (Cruz Delgado, 1988), spun a popular series, Los Trotamúsicos (1989), was the first animation film prized at the Goya Awards.^[4]

Feature production didn't make an impact for most of the 1990s, and only one Goya award was granted in the first half of the decade, for The Return of the North Wind (Maite Ruiz de Austri, 1993). It was however a period of experimentation: Megasónicos (1997) was the first European CGI animation feature,^[5] and A Child's Play (Pablo Lloréns, 1999) was the first Spanish stop-motion feature.

Production rose in the following years, and in 2000 four films competed for the Goya Award for the first time. The Living Forest (2001) was the first widely distributed CGI feature, but most films were made in traditional animation for the first half of the decade. While most of them were influenced by American animation, Gisaku (Baltasar Pedrosa, 2005) was branded as the first Spanish anime feature^[6] and released at nearly the same time in Japan and Spain.

Contemporary era

From the second half of the 2000s CGI has been the dominating trend in family features. Many of them were co-productions with other countries, such as Great Britain in Kandor Graphics' The Missing Lynx (2008) and Justin and the Knights of Valour (2013). The most ambitious of these co-productions was Planet 51 (2009), with a $70 million budget. At the same time, Spanish animation co-produced foreign films such as Michel Ocelot's Azur and Asmar (2006).

Some of the most ambitious projects in more recent years were produced just in Spain with the backing of television networks, such as Mediaset in Lightbox Entertainment's Tad, the Lost Explorer (2012) and Capture the Flag (2015). Meanwhile live-action directors Juan José Campanella and Javier Fesser entered the CGI animation field with Underdogs (2013) and Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible (2014) respectively.

Traditional animation is still used in adult projects. Chico and Rita (Fernando Trueba, 2010) won the European Award and was nominated for the Academy Award, while Wrinkles (Ignacio Ferreras, 2011) was nominated for the European Award and the Annie Award. Lastly, stop-motion has been used for horror features such as Going Nuts (Juanjo Ramírez, 2007) and O Apóstolo (Fernando Cortizo, 2012).

List of productions

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										Prized	Nomin.
Title	Release	R. time	Technique	Main animation studio	Director	Co-producers	Rating	Budget	Box office	Awards
										Goya	Euro	Oscar	Annie
Garbancito of La Mancha	1945-11-23	98 min.	Traditional	Balet y Blay	J.M. Blay, A. Moreno			P3.1 million	P3 million
Happy Holidays	1948-12-27	73 min.	Traditional	Balet y Blay	J.M. Blay, A. Moreno			P3 million	P1.3 million
Once Upon a Time...	1950	75 min.	Traditional	Estela	Alexandre Cirici			P4 million
The Dreams of Tay-Pi	1952-12-22		Traditional	Balet y Blay	J.M. Blay, F. Winterstein
The Wizard of Dreams	1966-12-16	70 min.	Traditional	Moro	Fernando Macián
Mortadelo y Filemon Festival	1969	80 min.	Traditional	Vara	Rafael Vara				P2.2 million
Mortadelo y Filemon Second Festival	1970	85 min.	Traditional	Vara	Rafael Vara				P2.5 million
Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren	1970	75 min.	Drawn-on-film		José Antonio Sistiaga
The Wardrobe of Time	1971	78 min.	Traditional	Vara	Rafael Vara				P40 million
Magical Adventure	1973-09-06	69 min.	Traditional	Cruz Delgado	Cruz Delgado
The Attic of Fantasy	1978	75 min.	Traditional	Cruz Delgado	Cruz Delgado
Stories of Love and Massacre	1979-04-16	88 min.	Traditional	Equip	Jordi Amorós
Gulliver's Travels	1983-12-17	82 min.	Traditional	Cruz Delgado	Cruz Delgado			P100 million
Katy the Caterpillar	1985-07-15	69 min.	Traditional	Moro	J.L. Moro, S. Moro			P80 million
The Little Vagabond	1985-07-29	96 min.	Traditional		Manuel Rodjara
The Magic Pumpkin	1985	90 min.	Traditional		Juanba Berasategi
Town Musicians of Bremen	1989-06-26	86 min.	Traditional	Cruz Delgado	Cruz Delgado				P20 million
Peraustrinia 2004	1990-04-06	75 min.	Traditional	Marimón	Ángel García
Despertaferro	1990-12-05	75 min.	Traditional	Equip	Jordi Amorós
The Legend of the North Wind	1992	69 min.	Traditional	Eskuz	J. Berasategi, M. Ruiz de Austri, C. Varela			P150 million
The Return of the North Wind	1993	72 min.	Traditional	Eskuz	Maite Ruiz de Austri
Megasónicos	1997-12-19	85 min.	CG animation	Baleuko	J. González, J. Martínez
Ahmed, the Prince of Alhambra	1998-06	68 min.	Traditional	Lotura	Juanba Berasategi
¡Qué vecinos tan animales!	1998-09-04	69 min.	Traditional	Extra	Maite Ruiz de Austri
Goomer	1999-07-09	75 min.	Traditional	Merlín	J.L. Feito, C. Varela
A Children's Game	1999-10	74 min.	Stop-motion	Potens	Pablo Llorens			P48 million
The Thief of Dreams	1999-12-15	70 min.	CG animation	Dibulitoon	Ángel Alonso			P130 million
The Island of the Crab	2000-10-02	68 min.	Traditional	Irusoin	T. Basterretxea, J. Muñoz			P130 million
Marco Antonio: Hong Kong Rescue	2000-12-01	78 min.	Traditional	Merlín	M.J. García, C. Varela
The Living Forest	2001-08-03	82 min.	CG animation	Dygra	Á. de a Cruz, M. Gómez			€3 million	€2 million
10 + 2: The Great Secret	2001-08-17	85 min.	Traditional	Acció	Miquel Pujol
A Dog Called Pain	2001-11-16	90 min.	Traditional		Luis Eduardo Aute
The Legend of the Unicorn	2001-12-21	70 min.	Traditional	Extra	Maite Ruiz de Austri			P200 million
The King of the Farm	2002-06-21	95 min.	Trad. / CG / live-action	Bainet	G. Muro, C. Zabala
The Warriors of the Apocalypse	2002-08-14	80 min.	CG animation	Ovidio DVD	Jesús M. Montané
Time Gate	2002-11-29	80 min.	Traditional	Animatoons	Pedro E. Delgado
Dragon Hill	2002-12-20	80 min.	Traditional	Milímetros	Ángel Izquierdo			€3 million
Anjé, the Pyrenaic Legend	2002	67 min.	CG animation	Baleuko	Juanjo Elordi
El embrujo del Sur	2003-07-04	89 min.	Traditional	Lotura	Juanba Berasategi			€1.2 million
Betizu Among the Stars	2003-10-31	71 min.	CG animation	Baleuko	Egoitz Rodríguez
El Cid: The Legend	2003-12-19	90 min.	Traditional	Filmax	Raúl del Pozo			€8 million	€2.6 million
The Three Wise Men	2003-12-19	76 min.	Traditional	Animagic	Antonio Navarro			€7.2 million	€2.3 million
Pinocchio 3000	2004-02-09	79 min.	CG animation	CinéGroupe	Daniel Robichaud			$12 million	$15 million
The Balunis in the Adventure in the End of the World	2004-03-19	88 min.	CG animation	Baleuko	Juanjo Elordi
Glup, una aventura sin desperdicio	2004-04-02	73 min.	Traditional	Dibulitoon	A. Arregi, I. Berasategui			€1.2 million
Supertramps	2004-12-01	79 min.	CG animation	Dibulitoon	Íñigo Berasategi, Jose Mari Goenaga			€1.2 million
Arensivia's Death	2005	85 min.	Traditional	El Jueves	Maikel García
Gisaku	2005-03-04	81 min.	Traditional	Filmax	Baltasar Pedrosa			€4 million	€133,000
The Monstruous Adventures of Zipi and Zape	2005-03-09	80 min.	Traditional	BRB	Claudio Biern Boyd
Midsummer Dream	2005-07-01	98 min.	CG animation	Dygra	Ángel de la Cruz, Manolo Gómez			€6 million	€1.5 million
Olentzero and the Magic Trunk	2005-12-23	82 min.	CG animation	Baleuko	Juanjo Elordi			€1.3 million
The Warrior Without a Name	2006-04-07	90 min.	CG animation	Tornasol	David Iglesias			€2.3 million [7]
PayaS.O.S. ¡¡¡al rescate!!!	2006-12-29	70 min.	Traditional	Lotura	Imanol Zinkunegi
De Profundis	2007-01-19	75 min.	Traditional		Miguelanxo Prado			€1.5 million [8]
Klaus	2018		Traditional

Classic era

Animation first appeared on Televisión Española (TVE) in commercials and spots. The most famous short was José Luis Moro's The Telerín Family (1964), which was used to tell children it was time to go to bed. Its characters went on to star in the 1966 The Dream Wizard feature directed and produced by Francisco Macián.

In 1968, Cruz Delgado created for TVE the first Spanish animated series, Microbio.^[9] One year before, émigré animator Manuel García Ferré had created in Argentina the Hijitus series.

Modern era

Cruz Delgado's series Don Quixote of La Mancha (1979–81) was the first large success in Spanish animation for television, which boosted in the following years.

BRB Internacional, –founded by Claudio Biern Boyd, José Luis Rodríguez and Títo Bastoas– and TVE co-produced Ruy, the Little Cid (1979), Around the World with Willy Fog (1984) –both with animation made by Nippon Animation–, and The World of David the Gnome (1985). BRB Internacional also produced Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (1981) –with animation by Nippon Animation–.