Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Pedro Almodovar – all the big names in Spanish cinema were there for the 29th Goya Awards ceremony, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars.

He “set fire to Spanish movie screens in the 1980s”, said Almodovar of his friend, actor and producer Antonio Banderas, as he handed him an honorary award for his lifetime achievement and contribution to Spanish cinema.

Banderas said he owed his Hollywood breakthrough to Almodovar and paid homage to the legendary director: “It’s impossible to understand my career without taking into account the seven movies I did with Pedro, that is a fact. I have to say that I owe him my break in America, in a way. The respect he earned in Hollywood as a director helped me and actors like me to gain recognition in the US.”

The big winner of the night was ‘La Isla Minima’ – distributed under the English title ‘Marshland’ – a police thriller set in the marshlands outside Sevilla.

Directed by Alberto Rodriguez, the box office hit sc