Committee). In this thriller, a power cut interrupts the proceedings of the Communist Congress. When the lights come back on, the leader is found dead, murdered. The film was based on one of a series of novels by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán that featured a hard-boiled detective called Pepe Carvalho. The intrigue runs a poor second to Aranda's commentary on the Spanish transition to democracy. " The truth is that I cannot think of another film that deals with this fascinating period', he stated, there is a kind of collective amnesia about the time". Much of the film's action is filtered through headlines and television reports in imitation of the way in which the Spanish public lived the transition. The televised funeral of the Communist leader is a sly montage of mourners at the funeral of Franco. La Pasionaria (the legendary Spanish Communist leader who lived in exile in the Soviet Union during much of the dictatorship) is portrayed as a senile old dear who sits next to the victim but does not realize he is dead. Like La Muchacha de las Bragas de Oro, this was a film about extremist coming together in a democracy, in this case in order to solve a crime. Whodunnit ? it does not matter. As the interior minister exclaims: "In the same way that we've had to forget everything, you should do the same." This was Aranda's first work to be shot in Madrid instead of his native Barcelona. The film was not successful commercially. Fanny Pelopaja (1984) Aranda adapted the popular Catalan author Andreu Martín's noir detective novel, Prótesis. He changed the male protagonist into a female and titled his film, Fanny Pelopaja (1984). The film depicts a violent love-hate relationship between a delinquent woman and a corrupt police officer, with whom she wants to get even. Co-financed by French producers, the film was made in Barcelona with Spanish supporting cast and crew, and with two French actors in the lead. Dissatisfied with the French dubbing of the film, done without his oversight, Aranda tried to stop the premiere of the film in France. It was released under the title, Á coups de crosse. As a result of this dispute, Aranda sold the film's shares in Morgana Films, the production company he had created. Fanny Pelopaja failed to find an audience when first released, but now has become one of Aranda's best regarded