Almodóvar backs Spanish protestors

Spanish film-maker Pedro Almodóvar, has warned of an increasingly violent mood in his recession-hit country as he throws his weight behind a popular movement determined to stop banks evicting vulnerable people who can no longer pay their mortgages.

As Spanish unemployment hit a national record of 27% last week, he told 'The Guardian': "I think the country as a whole is worried about social unrest breaking out. I certainly am. Every day that goes by, I get the impression that there is further provocation to make it explode. That doesn't mean I am inciting anyone to violence. It is quite the opposite. I would invite everyone to react, but in the most peaceful way possible."

Almodóvar said be backed a controversial campaign of protests outside ministers' houses that prime minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative People's party (PP) government has likened to the behaviour of the Nazis.

"The people being thrown out of their homes have children too," said Almodóvar, whose friend, the former Socialist prime minister Felipe González, had called on protesters to respect the family homes of fellow politicians. "And those children see their parents or brothers and sisters dragged down the street by the police."

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With 3 million Spaniards now living in extreme poverty with income of just €3,650 (£3,000) per person per year, Almodóvar says new laws are badly needed to protect the vulnerable.

He sees the years of Madrid's party-crazed movida, which coincided with Spain's transition to democracy and his start as a film director, as a halcyon time of  freedom and  optimism.

"It has taken me 30 years to realise it, but this country is socially conservative," he says.

His outrageous new comedy, 'I'm So Excited!', is partly shot at one of the great symbols of Spain's economic collapse, the new but abandoned airport in his birth region of La Mancha - one of the infamous architectural white elephants,  left by a decade of extravagance and financial corruption.

Almodóvar says he was surprised at how the surreal backstories of the film's main characters – who include a crooked banker fleeing the country and a call girl who claims to have a compromising videotape of the king – increasingly resonate with the things Spaniards read in their newspapers.

It also explains why he has come up with a sex-sozzled farce after more serious dramas, 'Talk to Her' and 'The Skin I'm In'.

"I like the idea of helping people to have fun," he says, "because the atmosphere right now is so very bleak."

'I'm So Excited!' is out on 3 May