La Cabina/El Televisor review – horror and anxiety on the air and down the line in Franco’s Spain

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, La Cabina/El Televisor review – horror and anxiety on the air and down the line in Franco’s Spain, José Luis López Vázquez’s phone box nightmare is short and sharp but Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s TV fever dream overplays its hand Two macabre Spanish TV plays from the 1970s are being released as a double bill: Antonio Mercero’s La Cabina (★★★★★) is a cult 1972 surreal short film lasting just 35 minutes but encompassing an entire dreamworld of anxiety. It was conceived for television in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock Presents or Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, but I can imagine it shown in cinemas as a curtain-raiser before Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel. La Cabina is a black comic nightmare in which a fussy middle-aged man, played by veteran Spanish comedy actor José Luis López Vázquez, steps into a phone booth that has just appeared in a suburban sidestreet. But the phone doesn’t work and then he can’t get out; the door is jammed. What to do? There’s no mobile phone to reach for

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Technology file for readers following technology, science, product policy, markets, infrastructure, and the public consequences of innovation. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-06-18T06:00:04+00:00.

What to watch

Open questions include whether primary sources issue follow-up statements, whether local or market impacts become clearer, and whether additional reporting changes the timeline or adds material context.

Source

Primary source: La Cabina/El Televisor review – horror and anxiety on the air and down the line in Franco’s Spain via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.