23/09/2025 - Professionals have gathered at the festival to assess the progress of the Spanish government’s Spain Audiovisual Hub programme and to highlight the developments necessary for the sector

Spanish Minister for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service Óscar López during the event (© Pablo Cifuentes/SSIFF)

Once again, the San Sebastián Film Festival has hosted a day organised by the Spain Audiovisual Hub of Europe Plan – first examined at the festival in 2023 (see the news) – in order to reflect on and debate the programme and its context. It is dedicated to positioning Spain as a key hub for audiovisual and video-game production, amid sector-wide changes affecting production, distribution, consumption and business across Europe.

The plan is now entering its second phase, which will make €1.712 billion available in financial instruments to bolster the sector, whose employment has grown by 107% in five years, according to data from the Spanish government. Minister for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service Óscar López noted that, via the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), €44 million will be invested in the Spanish fund Culture CAP7 and another €4.9 million in the Moby Dick Film Capital fund, with the aim of facilitating financing for SMEs, promoting the creation of new companies and attracting English-language projects so as to bring shoots to Spain.

The professionals who had gathered for the day focused the round-tables on new trends in audiovisual production and on new avenues for the growth of Spanish cinema within the European audiovisual landscape – both driven by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and by strategies to create and protect creators’ intellectual property (IP).

Carlos Fernández de Vigo, CEO of IA Lab Professor Octopus and also the director of Memorias de un hombre en pijama [+see also:
trailer
interview: Carlos Fernández de Vigo
film profile], stressed the need to implement AI in the content-creation process – something that, in his experience in the animation and video-game sectors, “is already widely used, as just another tool”, not replacing anything, but rather helping to improve and refine creative processes. “AI should be taught in schools,” he said; “we shouldn’t be afraid of it.” Clara Ruipérez, director of Legal Strategy for Content at Movistar Plus+, seconded that view: “AI must be introduced with a broad outlook, across the entire production chain. To do so, we also need to tackle the regulatory uncertainty around it. Right now, there’s a lack of knowledge about how AI is trained, and how the non-European companies who wield it do so; we would benefit from implementing ethical codes and transparency that help us both in Spain and in Europe.” She added: “We can’t not incorporate it; we have to be competitive with a view to internationalisation.”

Alfonso Blanco, president of the Galicia Audiovisual Cluster, in turn clarified the need for an audiovisual law to regulate IP so that creators of content for public broadcasters will finally have their property rights guaranteed. “At the moment, a TV channel buys your content, and it stops being yours – and that is an aberration,” he explained. Helena Suárez Jaqueti, partner at ECIJA and founder of Entertainment Lab (E LAB) ISDE-ECIJA, cited the fact that “where the IP is registered is where professionals can secure financing”.

As for new financing models for the sector, Suárez Jaqueti went on to explain, “It’s good not to lose competitiveness in terms of the incentives to attract shoots, but we also need a pre-check tool for tax incentives backed by the ICAA or the Tax Agency, to instil confidence in potential international partners, without the need for the production company itself to do it.” She also added that she “misses Spanish banks”, which generally do not make major investments in the audiovisual sector: “If European banks can do it – even for Spanish projects – why not Spanish banks?”

Finally, the need to strengthen the industry was raised – not only technologically, creatively and financially, but also in terms of the sector’s presence and self-confidence. José Antonio de Luna, co-founder of the Filmin platform, issued a call for institutions and professionals to “help create European players and, if possible, Spanish ones. […] We have to rid ourselves of our complexes and our fears,” he added.

(Translated from Spanish)