A Time for Defiance

When the Spanish Civil War breaks out, the Prado Museum begins to be evacuated. One of the museum’s guards finds a painting by Goya and takes it with him so that it will not be damaged. In the meantime he meets a young woman and falls in love with her. With her help and her family’s, he tries to keep the painting intact in the middle of the war. The film tells the war not at the front but around a single painting. What becomes of cultural property in wartime is the real subject. A small man setting out to protect a great thing is what the story rests on. Gabino Diego and Leonor Watling appear in Antonio Mercero’s hundred and thirteen minute Spanish film, completed in 1998.