Almodóvar & Kitchens: "Pain & Glory"
- Blanca Valencia
- Mar 7
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
If there's one kitchen in the Almodóvar's universe that speaks to me, it’s the cave one in Pain and Glory.
My fascination with cave dwellings comes from my maternal side of the family, which hails from Guadix, Granada—the largest cave-dwelling town in Europe, home to over 10,000 people. Growing up, I was captivated by them: their natural coolness (a constant 20°C year-round), their unique design potential, and their history. My oldest cousin, Julia, with her impeccable taste and eye for detail, renovated her family’s cave into a beautiful holiday home. Something our grandmothers would have found eccentric.
Though the film is thought to be autobiographical, the actual shooting took place in Paterna (Valencia) rather than Ciudad Real, where Almodóvar is from.
Caves in Guadix are easier to dig than those in Paterna, and their origins trace back to Muslim times. For centuries, they housed the lower classes, including many Gitanos (Spain’s Roma community). These homes were practical—easy to maintain, and when a family grew, expanding was as simple as picar (chiseling) another room into the rock.
And what did cave dwellers eat? Possibly in harder times, their staple dish was gachas de maíz, a rustic polenta-like porridge enriched with a bit of pork. Here's an interesting article from Ideal, a Granada newspaper, about this traditional dish:Receta de gachas de maíz.
Back to Pain and Glory—Almodóvar’s cave kitchen stirred memories of teenage parties in Julia’s cave, making giant vats of terrible sangría. My grandmother and her siblings all owned caves, but these were primarily for jornaleros (day laborers) working the adjacent olive fields. The first to see their potential as living spaces were my mother's generation, though few of them ever slept in them since they had inherited homes in the town’s main square or along Calle Ancha, the broad main street which were more convenient and in keeping with their status.
But let’s not stray too far from the movie...
Salvador, the film’s protagonist, has two kitchens: the rustic cave kitchen and his bright, modern one in Madrid, an exact replica of Almodóvar’s own kitchen in the city. The Madrid kitchen features elements that nod to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and La Concejala Antropofaga (2009), a short film set entirely in a kitchen. If you look closely, the tiles in both films are nearly identical and the bold reds are a constant.
The city kitchen with its chromatic colors is aspirational featuring Hermès coffee cups. The color scheme causes the turquoise tiles look more bright due to the red cabinets. These two opposing colors are scattered throughout the director's kitchens and in his own one.
In the city kitchen the dishes that make a star appearance are of course the staples of his cinematography: overcooked flan and tortilla.
In the city kitchen the dishes that make a star appearance are of course the staples of his cinematography: overcooked flan and tortilla. Almodovar also relies in clever use of domestic servants that offer solace by making food for the protagonists.
The two kitchens are polar opposites and serve as a metaphor for the journey of the character from poor town boy to successful urbanite, one so many Spaniards aspire to.
Find the two recipes here:
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