Shortlisted for the 2020 European Studies Book Award!
‘Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain makes a lively and innovative contribution to the body of scholarship that explores the origins of the democratic transition in Spain in the emerging civil society of the Franco dictatorship’.
Pamela Radcliff
University of California, San Diego
President of the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
In Bulletin for Bulletin for Spanish and Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
‘Louie Dean Valencia-García shows in his deeply engaging and analytically eloquent monograph…[T]his book makes a significant contribution to the history of youth cultures and to the scholarly consideration of “the youth” as a crucial political and social category with its own agency’.
Kasper E. Braskén
Abo Akademi University,
Turku, Finland
In H-Net
‘Valencia-García’s book constitutes an insightful, very original and much-needed study of a series of cultural practices and artefacts that allowed young Spaniards to develop a counterculture that eroded the fascist foundations of Francoist Spain’.
David Miranda Barreiro
Bangor University
Bangor, Wales, UK
‘Lejos de los manidos tópicos y estereotipos, de los clichés sobre esta época de aquellos que hicieron todo y de todo, este libro dota de inteligencia política a sus protagonistas, a través de una forma nada convencional, esto es, a través de sus propios gustos y provocaciones. Algo, hay que insistir, muy difícil de hacer y conseguir en un libro de investigación histórica’.
Gutmaro López Bravo
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
In CTXT
‘This is what I’ve been waiting for – a colorful and creative exploration of youth resistance under the Franco regime. From Superman in Spain to naked pro-democracy protesters, Louie Dean Valencia-García uncovers it all. And given the recent emergence of authoritarianism in the United States and Europe, this book couldn’t have come at a more opportune time’.
Hamilton M. Stapell
Associate Professor of History, State University of New York, New Paltz, USA
‘This is a highly original study that investigates for the first time youth culture and the practice of everyday life in Spain under the late dictatorship and transition to democracy. In a series of brilliant chapters, the author examines a wide range of little known and less studied sources, often culled from archives: school textbooks, comics, nightclubs, and fanzines. From National-Catholic ideologies to Pedro Almodóvar via Superman and punk, this book offers a lucid and compelling account of a fascinating multimedia field’.
Paul Julian Smith
Distinguished Professor, City University of New York, USA
‘An extremely lively and stimulating contribution to the much-neglected social and cultural history of twentieth-century Spain. It offers a reconstruction of antiauthoritarian youth culture that delineates not only the intersections between dictatorship and democracy, but also the hitherto unexplored interstices of the transgressive, underground and counter cultures of the two regimes’.
Nigel Townson
Senior Lecturer in Spanish History, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain