Spanish views from a small town

There's a new movie in Spanish movie theaters. It's a historical movie, with a few licenses, perhaps. I suppose that if a historical movie doesn't take licenses, it simply becomes a documentary, and that's no fun to watch in a darkened movie theater, with buttery popcorn to munch and cold soda to slurp through a peppermint-striped straw. It's called Los Últimos de Filipinas , and is based on the story of the siege of Baler, on the eastern coast of the island of Luzón, in the Spanish-American war of 1898. There is another film of the same name and subject, filmed in 1945. That is one of patriotic clangor, a not-so-subtle shout of anger at the imperial Yanks, who had the audacity to destroy the last remnants of the great Spanish empire. I have not seen this one, yet I have read what the leading actor, Luís Tosar, has to say. He mentions that ".. .España siempre ha estado en eso, entre la gesta y el absurdo ..." (Spain has always been like that, between th...