Antes de ser modernos

In the 1970s, the last decade of Franco's repressive regime, the Spanish perspective on sex, drugs and fashion changed radically. The social conception of sexual and gender identity, the consumption of drugs for recreational use, urban planning and new trends in the field of fashion and design breached the leaden veil of Franco's society and gave people , especially to the youngest, the possibility of showing or even building new identities and ways of being. During these years, the irreversible changes that occurred in material and emotional conditions created the perfect breeding ground for the Transition. Thanks to them and a progressive openness towards the foreign and the new - at the same time the cause and effect of an inexorable desire for freedom - the people of Madrid began to adopt practices, behaviors and attitudes contrary to the military dictatorship and to incubate the germ of the Movida. that would infect the capital a decade later. In this essay, Francisco Fernández de Alba analyzes the passionate path towards modernity that one of its main sources of radiation had in Madrid.