AnimeFenix: animation from Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Cuba, and where to watch it

Why animation from Spain and Latin America

Animation from Spain and Latin America is full of warmth, humour and colour. It draws on a deep well of stories: medieval knights and minstrels, explorers who sailed around the world, the heroes of independence wars, Day of the Dead skeletons, Andean legends, Caribbean folk tales and the everyday comedy of big cities from Madrid to Buenos Aires. Its artists have used every technique, from hand-drawn cels to sand on glass, scratches on film, puppets and modern computer animation.

Much of this work reached children around the world under English names. Viewers who grew up with Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds or the Bobobobs may be surprised to learn that these series came from a studio in Madrid. Families who loved Pocoyo, the little boy in blue, may be just as surprised that he was born in Spain. AnimeFenix gathers these favourites together with the features and shorts that rarely travel, so that every viewer can discover the whole picture.

The catalogue is also a window onto history. Films such as Elcano and Magellan, Elpidio Valdés, True heroes and La Revolución De Juan Escopeta tell the stories of nations through the eyes of young heroes, while documentaries such as The Painting and Beavers: Patagonia invaders use animation to explore art and nature. There is something here for every age, from toddlers who love Pocoyo to grown-up viewers who enjoy experimental cinema.

How AnimeFenix looks

AnimeFenix keeps the look of the original AnimeFénix site: a near-black page, a dark navigation bar, an orange button for My List, a light button for Help and a search field framed in orange. Section titles are centred, written in tall Oswald capitals and marked with a small orange icon, a flame for what is popular, a play symbol for the latest additions and a folded page for guides and news.

The poster cards follow the same design. Each poster has a rounded top corner, a small dark tag with the year in the top right, an orange On air tag for series still running, a red tag with the type of title and the name in orange on a black bar along the bottom. Move the pointer over a poster and the tags fade away to reveal the synopsis between two thin white lines. The latest additions appear as wide thumbnails that lift with an orange shadow when you point at them.

Using the site

The home page opens with the Popular now row, a strip of posters you can scroll sideways. Below it comes a short introduction, then the Latest additions grid with the newest films and series, then shelves for Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, families and series. Every shelf ends with an orange link to the full collection. Further down, the Guides and news grid opens the fifteen help pages, and this long guide closes the page.

The search field at the top accepts English titles, original titles and parts of either. Type Koati, Elpidio or Mortadelo and the matching posters appear at once. For a series, add a season and an episode, such as Mr. Trance S2E3, to jump straight to that episode. The Catalogue link in the bar opens the whole collection with sorting by popularity, rating, year or the most recent air date, and the Browse page lists every title from A to Z.

When you find something you like, press Add to My List on its page. My List keeps the title in your browser, tracks the episodes you have watched and can be exported to another device. When you are ready to watch, choose your country and press Watch now to see the official services that carry the title.

The Spanish pioneers

Spanish animation began in Barcelona. In the 1940s, a group of artists around the Dibujos Animados Chamartín and Balet y Blay studios made the first Spanish animated features, at a time when few countries in Europe could. Happy Holidays, from 1948, directed by José María Blay and Arturo Moreno, is a cheerful holiday comedy drawn in the round, rubbery style of the American cartoons of the time, full of music and comic animals. It is a precious record of the beginnings of a national industry.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Spanish animators found their own voices. The cartoonist Chumy Chúmez made El corazón de un bandido, a witty short about a generous Andalusian bandit and his troubled love story, for the state newsreel studio. In 1970, the painter José Antonio Sistiaga completed … ere erera baleibu izik subua aruaren…, a feature-length abstract film painted directly onto celluloid, frame by frame, with explosions of colour that recall the abstract expressionism of the time; it remains one of the boldest experiments in European animation.

The same decade brought Spain's most famous comic heroes to the screen. Mortadelo and Filemón, the bumbling secret agents created by Francisco Ibáñez, starred in a series of short films collected in Second Mortadelo and Filemon Festival, where the two agents chase thieves, guard precious vases and escape from prison with the same slapstick energy as in the comics. In 1983, Cruz Delgado, one of the great names of Madrid animation, made Gulliver's Travels, a colourful family version of Jonathan Swift's tale in which Gulliver washes ashore in the land of the giants.

BRB Internacional and the international series

In the 1980s, the Madrid studio BRB Internacional, founded by Claudio Biern Boyd, began to work with Japanese studios to make series that would be shown around the world. The most famous is Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, made with Nippon Animation, which retells Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers with a cast of dogs. The young Dogtanian travels from Gascony to Paris to join the King's Muskehounds and meets the three friends Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Dogtanian Special, from 1985, gathers the story into a feature, and Dogtanian: One for All and All for One, from 1995, follows the later series in which Dogtanian's young daughter is kidnapped during a plot against the king.

BRB and Nippon Animation also made Ruy, the Little Cid: The Knight With a Wooden Sword, which follows the boyhood of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the hero who would become El Cid, as he dreams of becoming a great knight in eleventh-century Spain. The studio's own Bobobobs, first shown in 1988, follows a crew of tiny space travellers with psychic powers on their voyage across the universe, and it became a cult favourite in many countries.

Later BRB films brought new characters to families. Zip & Zap Meet the Monsters revives Zipi and Zape, the mischievous twins of the Spanish comic, in a monster adventure; Gladiator Academy: The Movie follows four young friends in ancient Rome; Adventures in the snow sends a clever judge and his assistant to help the family of the Abominable Snowman against the trolls; and the gangster parody Los intocables contra Al Catone pits a team of brave mouse agents against a cheese-smuggling cat in the city of Cheesecago. The Spain guide and the Classic series guide follow these favourites further.

Spanish features since 2000

Computer animation gave Spanish studios a new start in the 2000s. In Galicia, Dygra Films made The Living Forest, a gentle fable based on Wenceslao Fernández Flórez's novel, in which the plants and animals of the Cecebre forest come alive each evening when the humans leave, until a telephone pole lands in the middle of their home. It won the Goya Award for best animated film and showed that a small studio could compete with the biggest.

Other family features followed quickly. Supertramps sends a stray cat, a pigeon, a rat and a cockroach on a hunt for a lost cat and her reward. The Southern Charm takes the American writer Washington Irving to Andalusia to visit the Alhambra, where he meets the last descendant of the Moorish king Boabdil. RH+, the Vampire of Seville is a comedy about a family of Andalusian vampires who return home after five hundred years in a German castle. The Aviators, from 2009, made in Catalan, follows a bird who wants to be a hero, a heroic carrier pigeon and a mouse inventor who dreams of flying.

In 2011, Snowflake, the White Gorilla told the story of Copito de Nieve, the famous white gorilla of the Barcelona Zoo. In the film, the young Snowflake wants to look like the other gorillas, so he slips out of the zoo with Ailur, a red panda who believes he was once a black panther, and a clever girl called Paula to visit a witch at the circus, learning along the way that being different is a gift. The film mixes live action and animation and became a favourite of Spanish families.

Recent years have brought ambitious productions made for audiences around the world. Julio Soto Gurpide's Deep, from 2017, follows three sea creatures in the deepest ocean in the year 2100, and his Evolution, from 2026, mixes human and animal DNA in a lively comedy. Pinocchio 3000 imagines Pinocchio as a little robot in the year 3000, SuperKlaus gives Santa Claus superpowers after a bump on the head, and The Inseparables pairs a runaway puppet and an abandoned plush dog in New York's Central Park. Hanna and the Monsters and Momonsters: The Movie give younger viewers friendly monsters to love.

Pocoyo

Pocoyo, the curious little boy in a blue suit, was created in Madrid by David Cantolla, Guillermo García Carsí and Luis Gallego and first appeared on television in 2005. His simple world, a white space with a few bright characters such as Pato the duck, Elly the elephant and Loula the dog, was designed for the very youngest viewers, and the series won prizes around the world. On AnimeFenix you will find two Pocoyo specials: Pocoyo & the Space Circus, in which a troupe of circus aliens visits Pocoyo's world, and Pocoyo in cinemas: Your First Movie, a gentle first trip to the cinema for toddlers.

Basque animation

The Basque Country has one of the most active animation scenes in Spain, led by studios such as Lotura Films, Dibulitoon and Barton Films. Many of their films are made in Basque, the ancient language of the region, and later dubbed into Spanish and English. Elcano & Magellan: The First Voyage Around the World, from 2019, tells the story of the first voyage around the globe, which set out from Seville in 1519 under Ferdinand Magellan and returned three years later under the Basque sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano with only one of its five ships. The same studio's The Longest Voyage retells the voyage as an animated documentary.

Lotura Films makes lively family adventures. The Island of the Crab, from 2000, sends a band of characters in search of a pirate treasure on a crab-shaped island. Nur and the Dragon Temple follows a Basque girl who moves to China and finds herself on a magical quest. Lur & Amets leaves twin children with a grandmother who has magic powers and a cat called Baltaxar, and The Extra Terrestrial Orchestra follows a young man who dreams of meeting a famous pianist and forms a band of unusual musicians.

Dibulitoon's Elf on the Run follows Tim, a young elf captured by a circus and rescued by a girl called Teresa, while Pixi Saves Christmas gathers Santa Claus, the Three Wise Men, the witch Befana and other gift-bringers into a festive adventure. The short Gartxot tells the legend of a twelfth-century Pyrenean minstrel who stands up for his music, and Gora Automatikoa is a sharp comedy about a film director who makes an animated film for the Goya Awards.

Catalan animation

Catalonia has its own strong tradition, supported by the Catalan television channel TV3. Jordi Amorós's Despertaferro, from 1990, takes a modern boy from Barcelona's Güell Park back seven hundred years to meet the Almogavars, the warriors of the Crown of Aragon. Miquel Pujol's 10+2: The Great Secret is a playful film for children set in the Country of Numbers, and LMN's shrinks a boy and a mad scientist into the world of atoms, a story that continued in the series LMN's: Adventures in the Microworld.

New Catalan films are among the most admired in Europe. Irene Iborra's stop-motion feature Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake, from 2025, follows a twelve-year-old girl who protects her little brother's happiness with her imagination when the family must move to a new neighbourhood. The Light of Aisha is set in eleventh-century Al-Andalus, where a girl dreams of becoming a maker of fireworks, and The Van follows a father who fills his young daughter's life with joy while they live in a van near Barcelona. The Catalan, Basque and Galician shelf gathers all of these films.

Spanish short films

Spain's short films win prizes at festivals all over the world, and many of them are made by small teams of friends or by students at animation schools. Javier Recio's The Lady and the Reaper, from 2009, is a black comedy about a sweet old lady who is ready to join her late husband, until an ambitious doctor decides to bring her back to life; it was nominated for the Oscar for best animated short. Daniel Martínez Lara and Rafa Cano Méndez's Alike, from 2015, follows a father called Copi and his son Paste in a busy grey city, and asks how parents can protect a child's creativity. It has been watched by millions of people online and collected dozens of awards.

José Prats's Umbrellas takes place in a village where the rain falls day and night; little Kyna lives under her father's umbrella-shaped beard and must face the rain to find her lost dog. Isabel Herguera's Blindman's Bluff follows a blind man who loses his guide dog in a big city and discovers a new kind of strength. Juan Pablo Etcheverry's Minotauromachy walks through the imagination of Pablo Picasso among his painted creatures, and his The Biggest Flower in the World is a visual poem about childhood.

Techniques vary from film to film. César Díaz Meléndez's Take It Easy is animated entirely with sand on glass, recorded frame by frame. Coke Riobóo's stop-motion Noise of the World follows a composer who can hear every sound on Earth and finds a way to tame them with music. Jaime Maestro's The Smoke Seller brings a dream salesman to a busy town, Giovanni Maccelli's Juan and the Cloud tells of a lonely boy and a lonely cloud who become friends, and Laura Zamora's The Tree of Lost Souls follows an introverted girl whose imagination is her refuge.

The new generation of school films is full of charm. Blue & Malone: Impossible Cases sends a girl back into the old theatre where her grandmother worked, to meet her old imaginary friends. Treasure follows Mari Pili, a retired woman whose kindness to the crows of her park is repaid with little gifts. Sandwich Cat is an alien who has swapped minds with a family cat, and Knockstrike follows a mix-up of two briefcases. Darrel, Conquerors, A Lifestory, Roped, Me, The Change of the Wheel and The Witch complete a shelf of wit and invention, and Elena Duque's two-minute Ñam makes dancing fruit swing to a Venezuelan song.

Art and history on the screen

Several Spanish films use animation to explore art and history. Andrés Sanz's The Painting, from 2019, is an animated documentary about Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, one of the most studied paintings in the world, and the mysteries hidden in its mirrors and figures. Fallas 37: el arte en guerra tells how Valencian artists built four satirical fallas, the giant sculptures of the city's spring festival, during the hard days of 1937. In Ictu Oculi watches a block of houses change over sixty-six years through archival images.

The History and legends shelf gathers these films with the explorers of Elcano and Magellan, the young knight Ruy, the Almogavars of Despertaferro, the minstrel Gartxot, Cuba's Elpidio Valdés and Mexico's heroes of independence and revolution, so you can travel through five centuries of history in an evening or two.

Mexico

Mexican animation has grown from a handful of pioneers into one of the busiest industries in Latin America. In the 1970s and 1980s, small studios made features for family audiences: Los supersabios, from 1978, brings Germán Butze's beloved comic about three clever boys to the screen as they build a rocket to Saturn, and Roy from Space, from 1983, is a cheerful space adventure inspired by the Flash Gordon comics, in which an astronaut travels to Mars to investigate mysterious cosmic rays.

The bicentenary of independence and the centenary of the revolution in 2010 inspired a wave of historical features. Carlos Kuri's True heroes retells Mexico's war of independence through the eyes of three young people, and Jorge A. Estrada's La Revolución De Juan Escopeta, from 2011, follows Gapo, an eleven-year-old orphan who escapes from soldiers during the revolution of 1914 with the help of a gunman called Juan Escopeta and travels across a country in turmoil.

Carlos Carrera, whose short El héroe won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, made Ana and Bruno in 2017, a fantasy about a nine-year-old girl who arrives with her mother at a lonely place by the sea and sets out to find her father to save her mother, helped by a band of friendly monsters. The film took many years to make and is admired for its tender story and its rich designs. Carrera's earlier short De Raíz is also on the shelf.

Mexican family films

Mexico's family studios now make films for audiences across the Americas. Koati, from 2021, follows Nachi, a free-spirited coati, Xochi, a fearless monarch butterfly, and Pako, a hyperactive glass frog, as they protect their rainforest from the wicked coral snake Zaina; its bright colours and Latin music make it one of the most cheerful films in the catalogue. Americano sends Cuco, a Mexican parrot, to Hollywood to find a television superhero who can save his family's circus, and Jungle Shuffle follows an outcast coati and a quirky spider monkey on a rescue mission.

Leopoldo Aguilar directed Monster Island, in which a boy discovers that he is a monster and goes in search of his real family, and, for Ánima Estudios, one of the country's largest studios, Cranston Academy: Monster Zone, set at a boarding school where a student accidentally opens a portal to a world of monsters. Aguilar also made the earlier short De Cómo Los Niños Pueden Volar, about a boy who learns to fly with the help of a vain crow.

Newer features show the range of today's Mexican animation. Un Reino Para Todos Nosotros follows two brothers who dream of reaching a walled kingdom by riding a giant creature, Two Little Christmases is a holiday tale about two children who meet a mischievous devil on Christmas Eve, and A Neighborhood Family is a football comedy about a grandfather determined to see Mexico finally reach the fifth game of a World Cup. The cheerful wrestlers of Mucha Lucha: The Return of El Malefico and the masked luchador of Jorge R. Gutierrez's short Son of Jaguar celebrate lucha libre, one of Mexico's great popular traditions.

Mexican short films

The national film institute IMCINE has supported a remarkable collection of short films. Karla Castañeda's stop-motion shorts Jacinta and The Waterwheel use delicate puppets to tell quiet stories of waiting and memory. Sofía Carrillo's Black Doll is a dreamlike stop-motion tale of two sisters in a strange house. The French-born animator Dominique Jonard worked with children in Michoacán to make That Lazy Boy, a comic Purépecha tale about a clever young groom, and Degeneration, inspired by the region's crafts; his A Jump from Here to There follows Don Ramón's journey north.

Other shorts draw on legend and folk art. The Myth of the Water Goddess follows a girl who sings to bring water to her village, Rabbit On the Moon plays with the Mesoamerican legend of the rabbit on the moon, Cages carries singing cherubs across the desert, and Elena and the Shadows opens secret worlds to a lonely girl. Mr. Wire's Nostalgia follows a shadow-puppet artist torn between his art and his ambition, and La Linterna Mágica a la Inquisición tells of a magic-lantern showman in Mexico in 1805.

The young generation brings fresh ideas. My Brother Luca follows a little girl convinced that her big brother has superpowers, Home of my Memories shows a boy who finds his passion through his grandfather, Adelina discovers art on her first visit to a museum, and Nube follows a mother cloud who protects her stormy daughter. Tlön, made at the national film school, links a writer of the 1940s and a game developer of today through Jorge Luis Borges's imaginary world. The Mexico guide offers a shorter route through all these titles.

Argentina

Argentina was one of the first countries in the world to make animated features, and its love of drawing and comics runs deep. In 1959, the filmmaker Fernando Birri turned the humorous drawings of the cartoonist Oski into The First Foundation of Buenos Aires, a witty retelling of the first Spanish settlement on the River Plate, using the original account of the German explorer Ulrich Schmidel. Ten years later, Luis Bras made Bongo Rock by scratching images directly onto 16mm film and colouring them with inks, a joyful experiment set to the music of a bongo band.

The 1980s brought family adventures such as The shield of the condor, in which a little circus performer and his trainer are sent to a distant planet, and the 2000s brought a wave of new features. Mercano the Martian, by Juan Antín, follows a Martian who lands in Buenos Aires and discovers the comedy and chaos of the big city; it became a cult film and a landmark of Argentine animation. Micaela, una película mágica follows a girl who protects the colours of her forest, Cóndor Crux is a science-fiction adventure set in the Southern Cone of 2068, Teo, Intergalactic Hunter brings a playful alien to Earth, and Valentina, the movie follows a group of teenage friends planning a spring party.

Esteban Echeverría's The Star Making Machine, from 2012, is one of the most imaginative family films in the catalogue. Pilo, a ten-year-old boy, lives with his mother on a small asteroid near a giant blue planet. His grandfather has told him of a machine that makes the stars shine each night, and when the stars begin to fail, Pilo sets out to repair it and becomes a hero. More recent Argentine features include Ánima Buenos Aires, a portrait of the capital in four chapters by different artists, the nature documentary Beavers: Patagonia invaders, Tres Acordes: Sobre sueños y taquiones about three childhood friends, and Emi Martínez: The Kid Who Stops Time, which mixes animation and interviews to follow the goalkeeper from a small town to world glory. Plata segura follows a boy who dreams of playing in a World Cup final.

Juan Pablo Zaramella and the Argentine short film

Juan Pablo Zaramella is one of the most celebrated animators in Latin America. His stop-motion short Journey to Mars, from 2005, follows a boy who dreams of travelling to Mars and the grandfather who finds a way to make that dream come true; it has won more than fifty festival awards. Zaramella's tiny films are full of wit: Hotcorn! shows the amazing skills of a man with an ear of corn, At the Opera tells a whole evening at the opera in one minute, Heroes turns an arm-wrestling match between five fingers into an epic, and Passenger follows a man struggling to fit the codes of the crowd around him.

Other Argentine shorts are just as inventive. Laika follows the famous space dog, Loop watches a society in which each person repeats the same action over and over, Augmented Reality follows two brothers who escape into imaginary adventures, and Dad Got a Job in Mars follows a brother and sister cycling through their neighbourhood in 1991, convinced that their father has gone to work on Mars. The Crane and the Giraffe tells a love story between a port crane and a giraffe, Ian follows a boy with cerebral palsy who wants to make friends at the playground, and All Futures imagines human life starting over on a distant planet.

Chile and Uruguay

Chile's animation industry has grown quickly in recent years and won the country's first Oscar for an animated short with Bear Story in 2016. On AnimeFenix you will find Ogu & Mampato in Rapa Nui, from 2002, one of the first Chilean animated features, based on the classic Chilean comic in which Mampato, a boy with a time-travelling belt, visits ancient Easter Island with his caveman friend Ogú and meets a girl called Marama. Cesante is a comedy about an unemployed man's chaotic day in Santiago, and Pulentos: The Movie follows a teenage hip-hop band from a popular television series on their way to an awards show in Miami.

Singing With Meanin tells the life of Violeta Parra, the great Chilean singer, composer and artist, in stop-motion animation. Who Are You? follows a writer with a creative block who receives a mysterious box, and Freelance is a funny short about a young knight's first day at court. From Uruguay come In the Jungle There Is Much to Do, a 1972 short co-directed by Walter Tournier, who later became the country's great stop-motion master, and Alfredo Soderguit's Capybaras, a fable about a family of capybaras who seek shelter in a chicken coop and must win over the chickens. The Southern Cone guide gathers these countries in one place.

Cuba and Elpidio Valdés

Cuba's national film institute, ICAIC, opened an animation department soon after its founding in 1959, and its most famous creation is Elpidio Valdés, the young colonel of the Cuban independence army created by the artist Juan Padrón. Elpidio, with his loyal horse Palmiche and his brave companion María Silvia, fights the Spanish colonial army in the war of 1895 in a series of funny, fast-moving adventures. Elpidio Valdés, from 1979, was the first animated feature made in Cuba, and it tells the story of Elpidio's birth, his father's sacrifice and the start of the war. Generations of Cuban children grew up with these films, and Padrón's lively drawing and sharp humour make them a joy for viewers of every age.

Colombia

Colombia has one of the most creative young animation scenes in Latin America, supported by the Bogoshorts festival and its film agency. Giselle Geney's 3 Feet follows Gonzalo, a ten-year-old boy who must keep his shoes clean all the way to school so that he can keep his beloved football. María Teresa Salcedo's Wild Lea follows a feral cat who is cared for by a rag doll and his family of mended things. The Plastic Turtle follows a turtle whose ocean home changes because of human waste, and Water Path for a Fish follows a boy who sets out one starry night to save a goldfish stranded in a puddle.

Colombian artists also make films for older viewers. The Intronauta follows a young man who escapes the noise of the media into a world of his own drawings, Color-less takes a girl through a black-and-white world to discover a magical secret, Yugo follows two farmers who set up a metal workshop on the edge of Bogotá, and In August links two visions across time in a flooded future city. The animated documentary Little Voices uses the drawings and voices of children to tell their own stories, and the feature The Other Shape imagines a paradise on the Moon open only to people with square heads.

The Caribbean, Central America and the Andes

From the Dominican Republic come 3 al Rescate, a holiday adventure in which a pig, a chicken and a goat escape from a farm before Christmas Eve and set out to rescue their friend, a blue iguana, and Olivia & the Clouds, a dreamlike feature for grown-up viewers about love and memory. Puerto Rico's The Owl's Feathers retells a folk tale about an owl called Mañito who borrows bright feathers to go to a party, and Honduras's Copán: The Legend, from 2026, is set in the ancient Mayan city of Copán.

In Peru, the studio of Eduardo Schuldt made Piratas en el Callao, one of the first computer-animated features made in Latin America, and its sequel Piratas en el Callao y el Regreso de L'Hermite brings back the Dutch pirate L'Hermite for a new attack on the port of Callao. Ecuador's Frontera follows a boy who plays at being a soldier and finds a wounded man, and Picchu follows Mayu, an Andean girl who follows her dreams with her mother's support. The Colombia, Cuba and more shelf gathers all of these countries.

The series

Television series fill the Series shelf with hours of entertainment. Marcelino pan y vino, from 2001, is an animated version of José María Sánchez-Silva's famous story of a baby left at the door of a Franciscan monastery, who grows up to be a cheerful, mischievous boy able to talk with animals. Fantaghirò, from 2000, follows a brave princess who refuses to be a quiet, obedient girl and sets out to fight evil, based on the Italian fairy tale that also became a famous television film series. Bobobobs sends its tiny space crew across the universe, and Captain Star follows the eccentric captain of a lonely spaceship, voiced by Richard E. Grant, from the comic by Steven Appleby.

CUTTLAS MICROFILMS brings the gunslinger Cuttlas, created by the Spanish cartoonist Calpurnio, to television in a series of short western adventures drawn with simple stick-like figures. LMN's: Adventures in the Microworld continues the atomic adventures of the boy Chip. The newer shows are made for today's children: Mr. Trance follows a purple-suited man with a wild imagination, PINY Institute of New York follows a group of creative students at a New York school, and Superthings Rivals of Kaboom, Kazoom Power turns a popular line of collectable toys into an action series.

The newest series is Los Colorado, from 2026, in which the famous Chapulín Colorado, the clumsy superhero created by the Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños, returns with a whole family of his own to save Chaotic City while handling chaos at home. The Lopeggs is a short sitcom about a lively Latin family with football, music and tacos. Every series page lists its episodes with their air dates, and the season and episode search takes you straight to a story.

Viewing routes

With nearly two hundred titles, AnimeFenix rewards a little planning. Here are a few routes through the catalogue, each built around a mood or an audience.

A family weekend. Open on Friday evening with Koati, whose rainforest colours and songs suit children from about five. On Saturday morning, share a couple of shorts such as 3 Feet and Wild Lea, then watch Snowflake, the White Gorilla in the afternoon. On Saturday evening, sail around the world with Elcano & Magellan: The First Voyage Around the World, and on Sunday finish with The Star Making Machine and Ogu & Mampato in Rapa Nui.

A journey through history. For curious older children and grown-ups, start in the Middle Ages with Ruy, the Little Cid: The Knight With a Wooden Sword and Despertaferro, sail with Magellan and Elcano, cross the ocean to fight beside Elpidio Valdés in 1895, and end with Mexico's True heroes and La Revolución De Juan Escopeta. Add The Painting for a detour into the art of Velázquez.

The festival evening. For lovers of the short film, put together a programme of prize winners: The Lady and the Reaper, Alike, Journey to Mars, Umbrellas, Jacinta, Noise of the World, Capybaras, Heroes and Take It Easy. In about ninety minutes you will see stop-motion, sand animation, hand drawing and computer animation from five countries.

Classic television. Revisit the series that filled Spanish and Latin American afternoons: Bobobobs, Marcelino pan y vino, Fantaghirò and CUTTLAS MICROFILMS, with the features Dogtanian Special and Second Mortadelo and Filemon Festival for a double bill of comic heroes.

Space and science fiction. The Spanish-speaking world loves the stars. Watch Roy from Space, Los supersabios, Mercano the Martian, Cóndor Crux, Teo, Intergalactic Hunter, The Other Shape, Deep and Pinocchio 3000, and finish with the short Laika. The Science fiction shelf holds them all.

Laughter. For an evening of comedy, try RH+, the Vampire of Seville, Supertramps, Americano, Sandwich Cat, Gora Automatikoa and the Zaramella shorts, then open the Comedy shelf for more.

For young children

Parents of young children will find plenty to share. The gentlest titles are Pocoyo & the Space Circus, Pocoyo in cinemas: Your First Movie, Momonsters: The Movie, Wild Lea, Treasure, The Owl's Feathers, Rabbit On the Moon and The Myth of the Water Goddess. They are short, simple and full of colour, and many tell their stories through pictures and music, so children can enjoy them in any language.

For children from about six, try the features Koati, Snowflake, the White Gorilla, Elf on the Run, Lur & Amets, Hanna and the Monsters, Pixi Saves Christmas, SuperKlaus, Micaela, una película mágica and 3 al Rescate. The historical films and the festival shorts suit older children and grown-ups, and every title page shows the running time so you can plan the evening. The For families shelf gathers forty family titles in one place.

The AnimeFenix guides

Fifteen short guides help you make the most of AnimeFenix. How to watch explains the three steps from a poster to the film, Finding a title shares search tips for English and original names, and My List explains how to keep titles for later and track your episodes.

The country and history guides open the catalogue in shorter routes. The Spain guide runs from Happy Holidays to Hanna and the Monsters, the Mexico guide covers coatis, luchadores and folk legends, the Southern Cone guide visits Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, the Classic series guide gathers the television favourites, and The art of the short film celebrates the prize winners.

The practical guides cover the rest. Languages and dubs explains the Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician and English versions, Apps and devices covers phones, tablets and televisions, and Where AnimeFenix titles stream describes the official services behind Watch now. Free animation from Spain and Latin America points to archives and festivals, Streaming safely offers a short checklist, The official AnimeFenix site shows how to recognise the real address, and Is AnimeFenix working? gives quick fixes when a page loads slowly.

Languages and names

Most films on AnimeFenix were made in Spanish, and Spanish itself has many voices: the Castilian of Madrid, the Rioplatense of Buenos Aires, and the Spanish of Mexico City, Bogotá, Santiago and Havana. Many features are dubbed into Latin American Spanish for the Americas and into Castilian for Spain, so a single film can have two Spanish versions with different voices and even different jokes.

Spain's other languages are well represented too. Catalan films such as The Aviators, Despertaferro and Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake, Basque films such as Elcano and Magellan, Lur and Amets and Elf on the Run, and the Galician The Living Forest were made in their own languages and later dubbed. Several co-productions, such as Deep, Koati and The Inseparables, were recorded in English. Every title page shows the English name and the original one, and search accepts both, so typing a title in Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician or English finds the right film. Each streaming service lists its own audio and subtitle options.

Techniques and craft

One of the pleasures of AnimeFenix is the range of techniques on its shelves. The early Spanish features were drawn by hand and painted on cels, a slow craft shared by the BRB series of the 1980s, while José Antonio Sistiaga painted his abstract feature directly onto the film itself. In Argentina, Luis Bras scratched his images into the film with a needle, and in Spain César Díaz Meléndez shaped his short entirely from sand on a lit glass table.

Stop-motion is especially strong across the region. The Barcelona studio I+G Stop Motion made Lupe & Bruno, a love story told at a bus stop as its two characters grow up, and Irene Iborra's Citoplasmas studio built the puppets of Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake by hand. Karla Castañeda and Sofía Carrillo in Mexico, Juan Pablo Zaramella in Argentina, Walter Tournier in Uruguay and the makers of Singing With Meanin in Chile all work with puppets, clay and miniature sets that give their films a warmth you can almost touch.

Computer animation arrived in the 2000s with The Living Forest, Piratas en el Callao and The Star Making Machine, and today studios across the region combine digital tools with hand-made textures. Winter In The Rainforest, made with porcelain figures of Mexican and Peruvian animals, and Focus, hand-drawn in a single minute, show how freely artists move between techniques. Each title page names the director and the studio, so you can follow a style from one film to the next.

Festivals and prizes

The Spanish-speaking world has a busy calendar of animation festivals. The Quirino Awards in Tenerife celebrate Ibero-American animation every year, and Spain's Goya Awards include prizes for the best animated feature and short. Animacor in Córdoba, Mexico's Pixelatl in Cuernavaca, Chilemonos in Santiago and the Bogoshorts festival in Bogotá give new artists a stage, and many of the shorts on AnimeFenix were first seen there before travelling to Annecy, Berlin, Cannes and the Oscars.

These festivals also tell the story of how the region's animation has grown. Twenty years ago, a single Latin American feature at a major festival was news; today, films from Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia compete for the biggest prizes every year. The Top rated shelf is a good place to see the titles viewers admire most.

The shelves

The catalogue is arranged on seventeen shelves, and every title sits on several of them. Catalogue holds everything, with sorting by popularity, rating, year or the latest air date. The country shelves come next: Spain is the largest, Mexico follows, and Argentina, Chile and Uruguay and Colombia, Cuba and more cover the rest of the Americas.

The theme shelves help when you know your mood: For families, History and legends, Comedy and Science fiction. The form shelves help when you know how much time you have: Features for a full evening, Short films for a spare quarter of an hour and Series for stories that continue over many evenings. The era shelves, Before 2000, 2000 to 2014 and Since 2015, trace the history of the region decade by decade.

Because the shelves overlap, a film such as Elcano and Magellan appears under Spain, Catalan, Basque and Galician, History and legends, For families, Features and Since 2015, so whichever door you open, you will find it. Over time the shelves become a map of the whole Spanish-speaking world of animation, and each visit reveals a studio, an artist or a country you have yet to meet.

How the catalogue is chosen

Every title on AnimeFenix is chosen by hand. The catalogue focuses on animation made in Spain and Latin America, in Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician, together with co-productions in English from studios in the region. Each entry is checked for its story, its studio and its audience; the catalogue is family-friendly at heart, with historical and art films clearly described for older viewers.

Facts on every page, such as release dates, running times, directors and studios, come from public film databases, and the Watch now button uses JustWatch to show the official services in your country. When a restored classic returns to a streaming service, or a new short wins a prize at the Quirino Awards or Annecy, it joins the right shelves with a full page of facts, and older pages are reviewed from time to time so their posters and services stay fresh.

A phoenix of animation

The phoenix is the bird that rises again from its own fire, and the animation of Spain and Latin America has done just that, again and again: from the Barcelona studios of the 1940s to the international series of the 1980s and the stop-motion festival winners of today. AnimeFenix brings these films together in one place, with clear pages, helpful guides and a path to the official services. Open a shelf, pick a poster and press Watch now: a white gorilla, a brave coati or a young colonel on his horse is waiting for you.

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