Sex, Drugs, and Fashion in 1970s Madrid

Sex, Drugs, and Fashion in 1970s Madrid explores changes in urban planning, narratives of sexual and gender identity, recreational drug use, and fashion design during the seventies.

Francisco Fernández de Alba is an associate professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies at Wheaton College.

Kathleen M. Vernon, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature, Stony Brook University:

"Francisco Fernández de Alba reads an impressive range of sources, from down-market destape films to intellectually substantive articles in influential magazines such as Triunfo and Cuadernos para el diálogo, to reveal the layered cultural sediment underlying the transformations in affects, values, and behaviours taking place during Spain’s long 1970s."

Susan Larson, Charles B. Qualia Professor of Romance Languages, Texas Tech University:

"Sex, Drugs, and Fashion in 1970s Madrid is an innovative cultural history that digs deep into both the urban politics and everyday life of the last decade of the Franco dictatorship in order to better historicize and even problematize some of our common assumptions about the role of Spain’s capital in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Fernández de Alba skilfully demonstrates the inner workings of the reciprocal nature between the material conditions and cultural imaginaries of Madrid. During this period in the city’s history politicians, urban planners, and working-class neighbourhood associations worked together to solve serious issues, resulting in new, more hybrid democratic urban identities. This book will be immensely illuminating for anyone interested in urban studies, affect, and popular culture in the age of consumer capitalism."

Jo Labanyi, College of Arts and Science, New York University:

"This study of the emergence of a specific kind of youth culture in 1970s Spain is a welcome reminder that the key features of the Madrid Movida were anticipated and made possible by changes in social habits that occurred in that decade, if not earlier in some cases. Particularly fascinating is the study of the evolution of the fashion industry, which allowed a ‘democratization of taste’ before political democracy arrived."