Numancia Cinema

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1931

The Numancia cinema was installed for more than fifty years in a building that still stands today, located in the upper part of the street that bears its name. 

Innovative from its origins, the Numancia was inaugurated on 9 September 1931 with the first sound film that could be seen and heard in Tenerife: La Canción de la Estepa, a romantic musical made by director Lionel Barrymore. The expectation in Santa Cruz for this premiere was such that tickets for the 746 seats sold out days in advance. It was the first cinema on the island equipped with a fixed Western Electric sound system.

This cinema was for years one of the most important in Santa Cruz. It premiered films, before the Civil War, with clear political themes, such as Acorazado Potemkin by Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein; or social themes, such as Nobleza baturra (1935) by Spanish director Florián Rey. During the Franco regime, the Numancia continued to screen cult or "independent" films, always under the yoke of the feared censorship. In the late 1960s it began to offer films in the original version with Spanish subtitles; it never ceased to be a pioneering cinema. 

The Numancia closed its doors in the 1980s. From that date, the venue housed, for some years, the headquarters of a local television production company. Currently, the old building remains standing without apparent use.

28.473, -16.2563