This is a classic Spanish animated film and considered to be the first color animated film made in Europe. ¨Garbancito de la Mancha¨ tells the story of Garbancito (Chickpea), an orphan boy who lives in a small town and who is continually subjugated and harassed to the antics of three other boys: Manazas, Pelanas and Pajarón. One day the arrival of the giant Caramanca is announced, who devours the children raw and kidnaps Garbancito's two friends: Kiriqui and Chirili. To rescue his friends, Garbancito or Chickpea has the help of a goat called Peregrina, his Fairy Godmother who gives him magical powers: the ability to turn into a chickpea whenever he wants and an enchanted sword with invincible abilities. With these powers, Garbancito can turn into a chickpea whenever he wants and thus face an evil witch who usually flies on the back of a bird, in the same way he must also fight against the evil giant Caramanca in order to free all the children he has locked up.
Garbancito de la Mancha is a Spanish animated film directed by Arturo Moreno and José María Blay . The plot is a bit sappy, and too childish, while the animation is frankly naive and primitive, and all throughout following the style of the classic American animated film director Max Fleischer. The latter was a great precursor of the genre and made notable animated films, such as The Tantalizing Fly (1919), The Circus (1920), Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor (1936), Gulliver and the Superman and Betty Boop series. , all of them would leave their mark on the director of this film Arturo Moreno in order to carry out this innovative ¨Garbancito de la Mancha¨. It is the first animated feature film made in Spain and the first in color in Europe. It is an adaptation of the story of the same title written by Julián Pemartín. In 1945 this ¨Garbancito de la Mancha¨ won the National Entertainment Union Award for best film.
The film was considered lost until 2020, when several of the original reels were recovered. Garbancito is a milestone in European cinema, because it was the first color animated film shot outside the United States, the first Spanish animated feature film and the first European to use the celluloid animation technique. Only copies of poor quality and sound remain of this work, and until now no one had dared to restore it. In 2019 and 2020, 8 of the 10 original Dufay coils were discovered at two separate garage sales in New York by collector David Bull, who contacted Spain and returned the coils for the small sum of $5,200, with the which recovered what it had invested in storage and research. When asked why he didn't try to sell the valuable reels for a large sum, Bull replied: "I can't hold a country's cultural heritage hostage." On July 20, 2020, the purchase by the Spanish Film Archive of said nitrate copy of the film in Dufay-Chrome was announced, to carry out a restoration project to recover the original color of the film and its digitization for subsequent exhibition. . Seen recently, the film has been renovated a lot, but the original colors are still missing. All you have to do is compare it with Walt Disney's classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was made some time before: 1937, and in which the image is perfectly restored, making it a real pleasure to see it. Let's wait to see if this ¨Garbancito de La Mancha gets a perfect wash in its frames and thus be able to contemplate it in all its splendor.
