ALREADY this year we’ve journeyed with the Italians, gourmandised with the French, laughed with the Latin Americans and this month it’s time to turn towards Spain, with the launch of the Spanish Film Festival.

The organisers have come up with 22 films, not just from the home culture, but from Hispanic countries including Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Peru – and the Canary Islands.

Adding a little Spanish suavity, the livewire director to the Sydney Dance Company, Rafael Bonachela, has agreed to be the patron’s event, a nod to Spanish pride in one of the country’s most notable cultural exports.

According to festival director Genevieve Kelly, there’ll be a whopping 21 Australian premieres as well as a number of pre-film events involving tapas and live entertainment. One such is the fabulous fiesta party before the opening-night screening, “A Gun in Each Hand”, on June 18. Another accompanies Mexican director Natalia Beristáin’s visit on June 22 to introduce her debut film, “She Doesn’t Want to Sleep Alone”.

Then on the Canberra closing night, the ubiquitous Catherine Deneuve stars in the equally ubiquitous Luis Buñuel’s ‘70s surrealist classic, “Tristana”.

Why not? France is just next door to Spain and, in Fernando Trueba’s “The Artist and the Model”, nominated for 13 Goya Awards this year, we’ll see a Spanish production in the French-language, set in the French Pyrenees during 1943.

For fun, look out for the box-office hit “Carmina” that follows the filmmaker Paco León’s mother, a 58-year-old Seville tavern manager.

Where would Spanish film be without the late Generalissimo Franco? This phenomenon is celebrated in the “Jazz and Jewels” night on June 23, when sponsors Estrella Damm and Torres Wines are throwing a tapas and live jazz shindig to precede the screening of “Hold Up!” a heist movie based on the true story of a devious plan to prevent Franco’s wife getting her paws on the jewels once owned by Eva Peron.

Among the Latin American movies are “Days of Grace”, a crime drama from Mexico set against the backdrop of the 2002, 2006 and 2010 soccer World Cups and “Don’t Fall in Love with Me”, a rom-com from Argentina.

Finally, no self-respecting movie festival is without a horror film and this is no exception with Spain’s “The Body”, in which the corpse of a femme fatale goes missing from a morgue.

16th Spanish Film Festival, June 18-26, Palace Electric Cinemas, bookings to palacecinemas.com.au, full program at spanishfilmfestival.com.au