Is Spanish cinema a victim of Almodovar's success?

Spain's best-known director says British distributors are to blame for the paucity of Iberian cinema over here. What do you think?

Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodovar promotes his most recent film, Volver at Cannes 2006. Photograph: Francois Guillot/Getty

Your seats, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for this week's trial-by-blog (fingers crossed there'll be another one next Tuesday). The dispute centres on a recent Guardian article headlined "The curse of Almodovar", which highlighted the problems faced by those Spanish exports that are not "un film de Almodovar".

"The Spanish film industry churns out up to 100 features a year," explained the writer, Paul Julian Smith. "Of these we in the UK get to see perhaps four or five .... Ironically, it seems that one super-sized name can capsize a national film industry by monopolising international interest."

This morning the article prompted an angry response from the super-sized name himself. Pedro Almodovar wrote to us complaining that he feels "unjustly abused" by the piece. He points to research by the UK Film Council which shows that 96.3% of box office earnings go to English-language releases, leaving continental Europe scrabbling for a paltry 1.3% market share. "The UK market leaves no room for the British public to discover films being made in other languages," he states. "Do you seriously believe I can be held accountable for that!?"

Actually I don't. And neither, I suspect, does Paul Julian Smith. His article questions the wider relationship between Spanish film-makers and the UK distributors trying to operate in an unforgiving market. It suggests that these distributors traditionally err on the side of caution - opting to go with a tried-and-tested brand rather than take a punt on an unknown quantity.

Now the headline for the article was possibly at fault because it fell into the same trap - pushing the Almodovar angle at the expense of the rest of the Spanish film industry (and this, I hasten to add, was our error, not Smith's). Aside from that, I think Almodovar's annoyance arises from a misunderstanding. We are not depicting him as some demented capitalist, wilfully strangling his fellow Spaniards in order to preserve his monopoly. As editor Catherine Shoard points out, "the only crime I believe the article accused Mr Almodovar of was excellence".

Put bluntly, Pedro Almodovar is successful because he has a proven track record in making distinctive pictures that connect with an international audience. For those film-goers who see just one or two foreign language films a year, he is a reassuring presence; a familiar face in a vast and sometimes off-putting terrain.

So who is the villain of the piece? Is it the director himself, who has through no fault of his own become so feted and dominant that many of his contemporaries now struggle to escape his shadow? Is it the conservative UK film-goer? The nervous distributor that caters to them? The other Spanish directors for not stepping up to the plate? Or is it we at the Guardian, who have clearly managed to offend a director we actually have a lot of time for? How come we never get these kind of missives from Brett Ratner?

So that, as far as I can tell, is your gallery of suspects. We await your deliberations and your eventual verdict.

(Surreptitious note to the jury: don't blame us).