Raul Arevalo’s directorial debut Fury of a Patient Man took the top award at the Spanish Film Academy’s Goya Awards ceremony on Saturday, February 4 even as Juan Antonio Bayona’s A Monster Calls nearly swept the night with nine awards, including in the director category, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

Bayona's tale of a boy who faces his mother’s illness with the help of a monster had received 12 nominations.

A teary-eyed Bayona, seated next to his twin brother Carlos, celebrated each award for Monster as if it were his first successful film, instead of the third in a highly acclaimed trilogy centering on the mother-child relationship. The helmer dedicated his award to all who suffer from cancer and to his father, who taught him the transformative power of culture.

Even so, the other big winner of the night was fresh talent Arevalo, whose decisive triumph was announced by a glamorous Penelope Cruz, and who also took home the best new director award, along with the best original screenplay prize.

Pedro Almodovar was on hand to celebrate his lead actress Emma Suarez’s special night, as she walked away with two Goya statuettes for her roles in his pics Julieta and La Proxima Piel. But the filmmaker, who will be the first Spaniard to chair the Cannes Film Festival jury in May, didn’t win in any of the six other categories in which his film competed.

The gala awards ceremony, which regularly veers political, shied away from controversy this year. The only note of protest came from Academy vice president Mariano Barroso, who obliquely addressed the public image of the Spanish film industry as living off subsidies in the official remarks, which he shared with Spanish Film Academy president Yvonne Blake.

“The state earned $30 million more off the sales tax of Spanish cinema than what it will invest in it. We are not a sector that lives off the state,” Barroso said to applause.