Page 29 - PLATINO EDUCA

of the greatest needs in an education system today which can be too theoretical and 29
intangible.

The internal and external trauma of a person and their family of arriving at a concentration
camp or prison without any way out is well portrayed in the film. Cruelty and friendship,
magnified in these circumstances, overwhelm our protagonist. Only chess will ensure
his survival. His journey through hell comes to an end only thanks to the game, thanks
to his memories, and the board he paints a thousand times on a stool. They want to
destroy it because they know it is somehow his dignity. It is a game of good and evil, of
living or dying, and it is chess that makes Diego Padilla find himself again, rise up and
live to rejoin his daughter and wife Marianne.

El jugador de ajedrez is a great educational
resource that can be used in multiple
ways. The educational importance of
chess itself is perfectly defined and is the
center of the whole story. Our protagonists
are fleeing from one broken world to
another that is also being destroyed, and
we witness Diego Padilla’s revival thanks
to a constant a pillar in his life, one that
made him an international champion and
was his livelihood: chess. A huge period
of our national and world history is well depicted in the movie which helps us understand more
about this lost world and what it meant for future generations. Generations who played a game
in which some lost and some won, sometimes with actions that cannot always be excused.

Fernando Escribano Martín is at present a
professor of Ancient History in the Faculty of
Philosophy and Literature of the Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid. He was a secondary school
teacher for more than fifteen years. Among his lines
of research are the ancient Near East and travelers
to the East, and he has worked on issues of Spanish
policy in relation to the Holocaust.