“This film should stir up a storm of controversy within Spain, because it pushes the Spanish Civil War theme a bit farther than other pix have been able to do. The ‘long vacations of 1936' referred to are those of a family caught vacationing near Barcelona during the summer of 1936 as the Civil War breaks out. Camino brilliantly captures the initial confusion and uncertainty and violence during the first days of tumultuous uprisings which were to lead to the three-year war. The whole war is seen from the vantage point of the Catalan family, which decides to wait out the conflict from a relatively-safe summer resort, rather than go back to the turmoil.... Fernando Arribas' photography is, in turn, crisp and moody, as it captures the pusillanimous family head, two high-class Nationalist sympathizers hiding from the Republicans, the son's romance with an Andalusian maid, the doctor who prefers to dawdle with biological experiments at home rather than help the wounded in Barcelona, the ‘red' schoolmaster who begs his pupils for food to keep from starving!”