Blurring Reality and Fiction in Contemporary Spanish Horror TV

This chapter analyses the horror TV work of Daniel Calparsoro, and specifically, El castigo / The Punishment, La ira / The Rage and Inocentes / Innocents as an entry point into contemporary Spanish horror TV production. First, it scrutinizes the Spanish TV horror panorama since 2000 in order to give an account of the evolution of generic category within the Spanish audio-visual industries. Second, it explains how new Spanish horror production can be seen as the product of the central role given to private television operators by the successive legislative changes in the Spanish audio-visual law. Third, it explains how Calparsoro&s;s TV work establishes a dynamic relationship with Spanish society, utilizing horror as a tool to engage with the real from a critical perspective. It combines an aesthetic account of the working mechanisms of the horror genre within the structural patterns of serialized television. The chapter explores how the horror genre occupies a significant position in the televisual landscape.