«Las Melancólicas» by Rafael Moreno Alba

an Allegorical Critique of Francoist Psychiatry and the Institutional Violence.

Abstract

This article offers the first critical reassessment of Las melancólicas (1972), the second feature film directed by Rafael Moreno Alba, interpreting it as an allegory of the psychiatric asylum system and psychiatric practices under Francoism. From an interdisciplinary methodological perspective, the study combines close film analysis with the historiography of Spanish psychiatry and archival research based on censorship records, surviving scripts, and a comparison between the Spanish and international versions. In the absence of previous critical studies and against its marginalization as horror or exploitation cinema, the article argues that the nineteenth-century women's asylum setting functions as a deliberate historical displacement enabling censorship evasion and an allegorical critique of psychiatric institutionalization and moral and social control. By examining asylum space and therapeutic practices represented, the article traces institutional tensions under Francoism.