"Ikusmena" presents a ten-year-old girl winning a prize in a school painting competition in a narrative disruptive by flashbacks that reveal how her artistic creativity had already been stifled by censorship and social pressures. "Ikusmena" was a success at festivals, but it suffered the inevitability limited distribution of short films. Armendáriz turned towards the more socially relevant documentary genre and made the eleventh episode in the Ikuska series: "La ribera de Navarra" "(The Riberbanks of Navarre)" ( 1981). This he followed with "Nafarrako Ikazkinack" in 1981 "(The Charcoal workers of Navarre)", a portrait of the hard life of charcoal burners. It was while making this project that the director met Tasio Ochoa, who inspired his first feature-length film.