2. Creative Beginnings in Almodóvar's Work¹

Summary

Pedro Almodóvar's short stories have received little critical attention, yet they contain key elements of his authorial aesthetic, his approach to narrative, and themes that later resonate in his cinematic work. This chapter examines some of his unpublished texts held in the general collection at Madrid's Biblioteca Nacional. The chapter sheds some critical light on the early stories, many of which are crude, unstructured, and lacking in literary merit, but full of freshness, an absence of restraint, and the pure creativity and imaginative gifts that characterize his later work. “‘The Visit’ and ‘The Advertisement,’ two of the stories from Relatos, announce distinct but related aspects of Almodóvar's creative enterprise which will continue throughout his career to date”. Relatos speaks to us about Almodóvar's awakening to the world of creativity and shows us how his universe is already present from the first step of his journey.