In the climactic scene of Blancanieves [Snow White] (Berger, 2012), Carmencita, the young protagonist and a bullfighter who suffers from amnesia, faces Satanás, a mean, huge bull. Through a point of view shot which replicates that of the moment in which her father, a famous bullfighter, was severely gored, we see Satanás furiously running against Carmencita. At that precise moment—surrounded by the entire community gathered around the bullring—she begins to cry as flashes of her forgotten past suddenly rush through her mind. As tears fall profusely from her eyes, Satanás, a symbol of the evils of the Spanish past, stops in its tracks. Remembering now her father's instructions to never turn “your eyes away from the bull,” Carmencita begins to fight with amazing grace, engaging in an intricate choreographic dance with the bull, a dance that suggests that only by directly confronting the past with courage can one co-exist with its devastating legacies.

To celebrate her bullfighting success, her evil stepmother, Encarna, gives Carmencita a poisoned apple as a gift. Encarna (Spanish for “incarnates”) embodies the wicked, repressive historical forces that opportunistically took over Spain during Francoism. Because she is supposed to be in mourning for her husband's death, whom she in fact murdered, she is wearing a black veil and dress with a dark spot resembling a clown tear painted under her left eye (Fig. P.1). After some hesitation, Carmencita bites the apple and falls into a coma; this symbolizes the collective official amnesia suffered by Spain after the lost opportunity opened up by the brief political transitional moment, suggested by Carmencita's recovery of memory in front of the bull.

Unable to extract further profit from Carmencita as a matador, her unscrupulous agent decides to parade her in a freak show along with a troupe of dwarf bullfighter companions. For a fee, any spectator can kiss Carmencita/Blancanieves and witness first-hand the ‘miracle’ of her reawakening, which occurs when the agent activates a jack-in-the-box type of mechanism.