Film and Audiovisual Culture Bill: why it lapsed

The Film and Audiovisual Culture Bill entered the Congress of Deputies in June 2024. The Bureau assigned it to the Culture Committee and, a week later, agreed to process it under the urgent procedure. In June 2026, the plenary took over the debate and the final vote, so that the Committee no longer had the last word on the text. The amendments to the articles were not published until 10 July 2026. On 6 October, the royal decree dissolving the Congress of Deputies and the Senate came into force while the bill was still pending. Article 207 of the Standing Orders of the Congress provides that, once the Chamber is dissolved, pending business lapses, except for matters that the Standing Committee (Diputación Permanente) must handle. Bill 121/000026 was therefore left without parliamentary effect.

The current law and the changed landscape

The state law of reference remains Law 55/2007, on Film. Since then, on-demand distribution, series for platforms, new forms of financing and exploitation, and consumption habits far removed from a circuit centred on the cinema have consolidated. The bill aimed to replace a law devoted to film with a framework for cinematography and audiovisual culture.

The change of name was not rhetorical. The explanatory memorandum described a global, digital market with new content, distribution services and forms of consumption. The text contained 41 articles, one additional provision, one transitional provision, one repealing provision and nine final provisions.

What the bill proposed

The bill rested on five declared pillars:

Strengthen the creative and industrial chain, with attention to independent sectors.
Support authors and the exercise of intellectual property rights.
Adapt to technologies, formats, consumption habits, digitalisation and sustainability.
Improve competition, transparency of attendance and viewing data, and respect for rights.
Protect cinematographic and audiovisual heritage.

The articles broadened the definitions and scope of audiovisual culture, reorganised support instruments, incorporated criteria of equality, accessibility and sustainability, strengthened heritage protection and provided for a State Council for Cinematography and Audiovisual Culture as a collegiate body for participation and advice.

The disagreements were not incidental. The amendments show disputes over the definition of independent producer, access to grants, the relationship between film and series, theatrical exhibition, platform transparency and the representation of the sector. The file never produced a drafting subcommittee (ponencia) text that would reveal which compromises had prevailed.

The chronology of an urgent procedure

14 June 2024. The bill is submitted to the Congress of Deputies.
18 June 2024. The Bureau classifies it and assigns it to the Culture Committee.
25 June 2024. The Bureau agrees to process it under the urgent procedure.
28 June 2024. The urgency agreement is published.
18 June 2026. The plenary agrees to take over the debate and vote on the bill.
10 July 2026. The amendments to the articles are published.
6 October 2026. The dissolution of the Cortes takes effect and pending business lapses.

The urgent procedure halves the ordinary deadlines set by the Standing Orders, but it does not guarantee that an initiative will reach a vote. Here, more than two years separated the urgent classification from the publication of the amendments. The procedural label expressed an initial priority; the course of the file did not sustain it.

What it means that the bill has lapsed

Parliamentary lapse does not repeal or amend Law 55/2007. Nor does it keep the bill at a point from which the new Cortes could resume it. If a future government wants to recover it, it will have to approve and submit a new bill, which will receive a different number and begin its passage afresh.

The work done does not disappear materially. The text, the reports and the amendments can be reused as background. But they have no legislative effect and do not bind the next chambers. A new bill could reproduce them, modify them or abandon them.

What the sector said

During the bill's passage, the Plataforma Audiovisual de Productoras (Audiovisual Producers' Platform) asked that the law genuinely incorporate the sector's contributions and respond to the needs of independent companies. After the dissolution, the specialist press described a divided sector: for some, the bill's collapse was a relief; for others, the prolongation of a wait that never ends.

I have not found statements from the directors' associations or the exhibitors' associations on the lapse. It is a significant silence, because both groups had direct interests at stake: directors, in grants and in the recognition of authorship; exhibitors, in protecting theatrical exhibition against the platforms.

There is also a political fact. Since July 2026, one of the bill's rapporteurs was the Partido Popular deputy Borja Sémper, who in September announced the outline of his party's cultural programme for the elections. The drafting subcommittee in which he took part never closed its report. Whatever his party now proposes for the audiovisual sector will also have to be read in the light of that file.

What cannot be asserted

I have not found an official document explaining why the drafting subcommittee did not close its report. Attributing the blockage to a specific cause would be speculative. Substantive disagreements, lack of a majority, agenda priorities or the repeated postponement of the amendment deadline may all have played a part, but the file consulted does not allow these reasons to be ranked.

Nor can it be said that the urgent procedure was legally invalid because the passage proved slow. The consequence is political, not an automatic nullity: the instrument designed to shorten deadlines did not prevent the initiative from exhausting the legislature without a committee report.

La bola negra: a success while the reform lapsed

The lapse coincided with an exceptional result for Spanish cinema. La bola negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, had by 19 October passed €28.6 million and four million admissions in Spain. It was the highest-grossing Spanish film of 2026 and the fourth-highest in Spanish box-office history, not adjusted for inflation. Its limited US release took $277,500 in five cinemas.

The international run had begun earlier. Calvo and Ambrossi shared (ex aequo) the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, and the film won the Audience Award for best international feature at the Sydney Film Festival. They are different kinds of recognition, one decided by a jury and the other by the public, and together they show a reception abroad wider than the Spanish box office.

The Film Academy chose it on 16 September to represent Spain in the Best International Feature Film category at the 2027 Oscars. That selection opens a campaign, but it is not the same as a nomination. The shortlist of fifteen titles is scheduled for 15 December 2026; the five nominees will be announced on 21 January 2027. As of 20 October one can speak of a Spanish candidacy with significant awards, audience and international distribution, not of a guaranteed nomination.

The case does not show that the system works well, nor that the reform was unnecessary. One exceptional film does not describe the whole sector. It does bring together several elements the law aimed to regulate: independent production, the participation of an audiovisual group, European co-production, theatrical exhibition, a Spanish platform, international sales and a global platform involved in the US release and the awards campaign.

It also prevents any simple opposition between cinemas and platforms. The route of La bola negra relies on both. The legislative question is not which should eliminate the other, but which rules favour financing, diversity, transparency, circulation and preservation without concentrating all the bargaining power in a few intermediaries.

The contrast is precise: while a Spanish film gathered audiences, awards and international visibility, the framework designed to accompany the sector's transformation lapsed without an approved text. One work's success does not make up for institutional failure. It makes it more visible.

What remains pending

Whoever proposes a new law will have to answer, at the very least, these questions:

How independent production is defined and what consequences that has for grants.
Which instruments apply to film, series and other audiovisual works.
What transparency obligations apply to cinemas, broadcasters and platforms.
How theatrical exhibition is protected without freezing changing distribution models.
What place linguistic diversity, equality, accessibility and sustainability occupy.
How audiovisual heritage is preserved and made accessible.
Which body represents the sector and how to prevent its composition from reproducing the sector's imbalances.

The question is not only which text is promised, but which agreements will allow it to be passed. The 2024 bill shows that a broad explanatory memorandum and a declaration of urgency are no substitute for a majority able to close the articles.

A 2007 law and a reusable file

The sector does not return exactly to the starting point. There is a complete bill, a documentary dossier and an extensive set of amendments that make the disagreements visible. That material reduces the technical work needed to try again. It does not solve the political problem that prevented it from becoming law.

Until a new initiative arrives, Law 55/2007 will remain in force with its amendments. That legal continuity must be distinguished from any assessment of whether it is sufficient. That a rule remains in force does not show that it answers the current market well; nor does a bill promising to modernise it show that its solution is adequate.

About the open conversation

This text separates the official state of the file from my interpretation of the urgent procedure and political priority. If you work in the audiovisual sector or in parliamentary procedure and notice a fact that needs correcting, write to me.

The author's relationship to the cases

There is no financial, professional or collection relationship with the individuals, companies and institutions mentioned.

Film and Audiovisual Culture Bill: two years of urgency and a lapsed bill