On 13 September 1976, producer Elías Querejeta addressed a letter to the director of the San Sebastián Festival, Miguel De Echarri, informing him of his decision to withdraw the film El Desencanto from the competition “in protest against the brutal repression suffered by the Basque People”. The text put words to the uncontrollable mobilisation under way in the streets of San Sebastián and in the other Basque provinces. That edition, the first since Franco’s death, tension was obvious between the wishes of some to instil democracy to the Festival and the resistance of others who preferred to maintain the status quo of a non-existent normality.

No more than two days after the letter was sent, carrying on regardless, the Festival daily proceeded to announce El Desencanto on the programme for the day. The publication also included a brief description of the Panero family, protagonist of the film, and a rundown of Jaime Chávarri’s career as a director, in addition to the screening times for the film (of which they had no copy, given that Querejeta never sent it) in the Victoria Eugenia and Astoria Theatres. The previous day, the one following receipt of the withdrawal letter, a scaled-down 8-page issue of the daily had been published, with neither interviews nor articles, opening with a justification: the publication had been put together that same morning. The Festival was improvising reactions to the movement. In spite of it all, according to the pages of the official daily, business that edition was to continue in the same vein.

Despite continuing to appear in the daily, El Desencanto wasn’t screened at that edition. De Echarri would refer to the episode in the official publication towards the end of the event. On the subject of Querejeta, he would say: “it goes without saying that we will proceed with caution towards him in the future”. A future more in keeping with that sorely missed past, but which was far removed from what would in fact transpire. Despite the improvised efforts of the Board of Governors, control of the event was increasingly out of their hands. In 1977, De Echarri would resign from the Festival executive for health reasons, and, in an edition marked by significant transformations for the event, Chávarri and Querejeta would receive the Pearl of the Cantabrian Award for the film A un Dios desconocido.

Fifty years down the line, that truncated showing of El Desencanto in San Sebastián will be set to rights. The screening organised by Artxiboa, to run in Tabakalera from 2 September, recovers, by means of unpublished material stored in the Festival archive, the events and voices to have accompanied the film’s withdrawal in 1976. The documents are organised in such a way as to interpret said episode and to understand its leverage in bringing democracy to the event, in the framework of an edition marked by tension and division. In the reactions of the official daily to Querejeta’s letter, those rifts seem obvious: between keeping the Festival the same way as it had been until then, and its reckoning with a painful past in order to envision a new horizon.

The exhibition An Act of Defection. The Gesture that Changed the Course of the San Sebastián Film Festival (1976) will be open on the first floor of Tabakalera from 2 to 27 September.