From Counter-Culture to National Heritage: "La Movida" in the Museum and the Institutionalization of...

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

From Counter-Culture to National Heritage: "La Movida" in the Museum and theInstitutionalization of IrreverenceAuthor(s): William NicholsSource: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Vol. 13 (2009), pp. 113-126Published by: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20641952 .

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Prom Counter-Culture

to National Heritage: "La Movida" in the Museum

and the Institutionalization

of Irreverence William Nichols is Assis tant Professor at Georgia State University. He has

published on diverse themes like detective fiction, corpo rate culture, tourism, food,

genre, and globalization in such journals as the Arizona

Journal of Hispanic Cultural

Studies, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hisp?nicos, Tabla Redonda, The Journal for the Study of Food and

Society, and Symposium. His manuscript, Transatlan

tic Mysteries: Culture, Capi tal, and Crime in the Noir

Novels of Paco Ignacio Ta ibo II and Manuel Vazquez

Montalban, is forthcoming with Bucknell U P.

The museum is indeed a site into which bourgeois society projects its dreams and Utopian projects.

Herbert Marcuse

"On the Affirmative Character of Culture" (1937)

IN THE PAST FEW YEARS, THE PERIOD KNOWN as the Movida in Spain, an uninhibited and vibrant era

in Spanish culture during the early1980s marked by an explosion of film, music, painting, fashion and graphic de

sign, has found itself auspiciously recalled and retold through various discursive modes. Through the songs of Mecano, the

Spanish pop super-group that gained fame in the early 1980s, the musical play "Hoy no me puedo levantar" (which opened in March 2005 in the Movistar Theater in Madrid) exemplifies the kind of recent cultural expression that retells the narrative

of Spain's transition to democracy through a nostalgic filter

that yearns for a perceived lost innocence and vitality of that

bygone era. Mecano, though never seen, becomes the comedic

foil in "El mundo asombroso de Borjamari y Pocholo" (2004) when two "ninos pijos" from the 1980s (played by Santiago

Segura and Javier Gutierrez) undertake a quixotic adventure

in search of Mecano's surprise reunion concert some 20 years later. Emotionally and linguistically stuck in the 80s, the

innocence of the title characters contrasts sharply with the

heavily corporatized consumer culture in Spain of the 21st

century.1 In "La mala education" (2004) Pedro Almodovar

sets the exhuberance and excess of the 80s as a backdrop for

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 13, 2009



114 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

a noir exploration of self, memory, guilt, and desire. Though Almod?var has clearly stated in interviews and articles that the film

is not autobiographical and should not be

considered a reflection on the Movida nor

an "ajuste de cuentas" with the Catholic

clergy, the era in question offers a perfect historical frame, in his words, to under

stand "la borrachera de libertad que vivfa

Espana, en oposicion al oscurantismo y la

represi?n de los anos 60"(Almod?var). Chus

Gutierrez's film, El calentito (2005) offers

easily recognizable cultural references to the

era of the Movida by integrating original

early footage of Pedro Almod?var, Fabio

McNamara and Juan Carlos de Borb?n

(though not all together) and reproducing the "soundtrack" of the era with music from

Los Nikis, Aviador Dro, Decima Vfctima, Derribos Arias, Par?lisis Permanente, Zom

bis, and Aerolfneas Federales. By evoking in the viewer a desire to recuperate a per ceived collective space, time and experience, Gutierrez articulates a nostalgic yearning for

the manic energy and boundless freedom

associated with the Movida. Recent docu

mentary films like La movida: La edadde oro

(2001), Rock-Ola: El templo de la Movida

(2006), La empanada de la removida (2007), Rock-Ola: Una noche de la Movida (2007), Costus: el documental (2007) have likewise

found fertile ground in revisiting the era

and exploring the legacy of the Movida.

Novels like Luis Antonio Villena's Madrid

ha muerto: Esplendor y caos en una ciudad

feliz de los ochenta (published in 1999, then reissued in 2006) and Kiko Mendez Monas

tery's La calle de la luna (2008), along with

such non-fiction as Jose Manuel Lechado's

self-proclaimed chronicle La movida: Una

cr?nica de los 80 (2005) or Silvia Grijalbo's recent testimonial Dios salve a la Movida

(2006), offer distinct narrative approaches to the Movida that, however, claim author

ity in asserting the verity of their vision

(or version) of the past.2 Even the weekly

Sunday magazine, El Pats Semanal, offered a

retrospective "where-are-they-now" in May

of2005, an attempt to "resumir los ?ltimos

25 anos" by profiling the trajectory of some

of the Movidas more well-known protago nists like Jesus Ordov?s, Johnny Cifuen

tes, Antonio Vega, Borja Casani, Rossi de

Palma, Ivan Zulueta, and Ouka Lele. Lastly, museum expositions and state-sponsored commemorations3 seemingly contradict the

uninhibited counter-culture vibrancy of the

Movida with an institutionalized vision of

it4: "Caminos de un tiempo (1973-1987)" at the Asociaci?n Cultural Caminos in

2005, Pablo Perez Mfnguez's display of

photographs titled "Mi movida" (2006)

presented at the Museo Municipal de Arte

Moderno de Madrid and organized by the

municipal government of Madrid, "Moda

y movida" in the Museo Manuel Pina de

Manzanares in 2007, "La Luna de Madrid

y otras revistas de vanguardia de los anos

80" presented in the Biblioteca Nacional

in 2007, the self-proclaimed "homage" to

the era organized by the regional govern ment of the Comunidad of Madrid simply titled "LA MOVIDA" (2006-2007), and the exposition of photos by Alberto Garcfa

Alix titled "De d?nde no se vuelve" that

ran from November 4, 2008 to February 16, 2009 at the Museo Nacional Centro de

Arte Reina Sofia.

Explicitly evoking the Movida in novel, film, museum expositions, and other

discourses suggests a critical temporal dis

tance from that period which permits an

evaluation of the perceived origins of Spain's modern identity. Yet, this same distance

lends to the idealization of the early years after Franco and a nostalgia for the inno

cence and vitality associated with them. In

either case, whether a critical assessment



William Nichols 115

of the foundations of Spanish democracy or a longing for the vibrancy of the destape

(explosion), such retrospective tendencies

in the current cultural landscape of Spain are really more related to the present than

the past, and re-reading the narrative they

project will allow, I suggest, a deeper under

standing not of the Movida (as the texts in

question themselves offer as their purpose) but of the political, social, economic, and

cultural forces that impel the need to re-tell

that particular cultural moment in recent

Spanish history. Far from Almod?var's

early gritty, experimental Super 8 films or

the impromptu, underground spectacles of

performance art known to happen during the Movida, the place of memory, to borrow

Noras concept of lieux de memoire, offers

sites of nostalgia (whether a commercial

movie theater, corporate-sponsored stage theaters, or state-sponsored museums) that invite the spectator to partake in an

institutionalized vision of the past through a self-reflexive meta-memory. The purpose of this paper will be to examine the museum

as a space of mediation that ironically strips the Movida of the context of its cultural

vibrancy in what Huyssen terms "cultural

ossification" to ultimately reinforce a nor

malization of Spain's self-image and reaffirm

an official narrative of the perceived origins of its modern identity. Curiously, while

many of the protagonists of the Movida, like

Pedro Almod?var or Alaska, are hesitant to

offer reflections about the era or are simply reticent to even talk about it, politicians and

bureaucrats?especially Alberto Ruiz Gal

lard?n, Esperanza Aguirre and their ilk?

celebrate and commemorate the Movida

as the culmination and epitome of Spain's

modernity. If the Movida was a transgres sive, urban phenomemon, then its entrance

into the museum signals an abandonment

of the streets and underground culture as

well as a withdrawl from everyday life to

form part of what is perceived, ironically as it may be, as patrimony of "legitimate"

public culture. The institutionalization

of iconoclastic discourse assimilates the

Movida into an official narrative about

Spain after Franco that not only further

exoticizes that moment of recent Spanish

history, reducing it to a frivolous combina

tion of big hair and transvestism, but also

removes its relevance to the present and

reaffirms Spain's "normalization," to borrow

from Lamo de Espinosa, by emphasizing a temporal and cultural distance from the

perceived values of the Movida. Here I

will analyze the discourse of meta-memory in two museum expositions organized in

2006: first, the exhibition of photos titled

"Mi Movida" by Pablo Perez Minguez, the

"cronista indiscutible de la Movida" and

winner of the 2006 Premio Nacional de

Fotografia,5 and second, the retrospective celebration organized by the Comunidad

de Madrid titled "LA MOVIDA."

Pablo Perez-Minguez s

"Mi Movida': A Pantheon

of the Past

Organized by Madrid's municipal govern ment and presented at the Museo Munici

pal de Arte Contemporaneo de Madrid in

Conde Duque, the photos in the exhibit

spanned from 1979 to 1985 and included a

selection of 90 portraits as well as 72 photos from Perez Mfnguez's Fotoporos series, a

collection of impromptu individual faces

shot at extreme close-up with a "flash a

quemarropa" to expose facial details down

to their pores. While the Fotoporos series

offers improvised images of often unsus

pecting subjects including such people as

Carlos Berlanga, Paloma Chamorro and




Fernando Savater, some of the photo

portraits are images of impromptu "hap

penings" and "diapo-parties"6 from the

era while others are highly stylized in their

composition exuding theatricality through

gestures, unusual poses, facial expressions, and costumes. Often integrating religious

iconography (such as the Cristo yacente, the Virgin Mary, or a Penitent's hood from

Semana Santa), referencing classical my

thology (el abrazo de Morfeo and Diana

cazadora), and including stereotypical icons

associated with traditional Spanish identity (a bullfighter's traje de luces or a guitar

breaking through a bullfight poster), many of the photo portraits seem to capture youth culture's disillusionment with accepted definitions of Spanish culture. Other photos seem prophetic, in retrospect, as critiques of

the infiltration of consumer capitalism as

individuals look sullenly at the camera while

holding red and yellow stickers, commodi

ties aimed at tourists, that read "Espana." In

a photo titled "Familia feliz" a young couple with a child, set against a checkerboard

background, smile fakely while they mimic

poses in advertising images by offering the

viewer the products they are holding: Mister

Proper (Mr. Clean), Suavizante Vernel, and

Calgonit detergent. Ironically, however, while the stated purpose of the exhibit is to

immerse the viewer in the atmosphere of the

Movida, the photos appear decontextualized

and re-presented as cultural artifacts from a

static past, a bygone era, whose relevance is

removed from the present, offered for the

visitor's distanced and disconnected gaze.7

Through such distance, temporally and cul

turally, the viewer becomes self-conscious of

his or her disconnection seeing the Movida as an isolated moment that is perceived to

be, as an article in El Confidential de Madrid

described, "irrepetible." The photos, then,

acquire a new meaning by creating the at

mosphere of a pantheon, both literally and

figuratively, that, on one hand, conveys to

the viewer that the Movida, as Villena sug

gested about Madrid, has died and, on the

other, invites the viewer to engage his or her

nostalgia in yearning for the mythical lost

innocence of that period.8 Svetlana Boym understands nostalgia

in The Future of Nostalgia as a dislocation

from time more than space, viewing it,

moreover, as the characteristic condition of

the modern age in which the steady march

of progress denies human beings the mythic return home they yearn for on an individual

and collective level. "Modern nostalgia," she asserts,

is a mourning for the impossibility of mythical return, for the loss of an

enchanted world with clear borders and values; it could be a secular

expression of a spiritual longing, a

nostalgia for an absolute, a home

that is both physical and spiritual, the edenic unity of time and space before entry into history. (8)

Ironically, then, industrialization and mod

ernization have accentuated the persistence of nostalgia with the concept of progress

dependent on a notion of "unrepeatable and irreversible" (13) time. The accelerated

pace of the modern world intensified the

collective and individual yearnings for "the

slower rhythms of the past, for continuity, social cohesion and tradition" (16). In the

opening pages of the catalog for the exhibit, Perez Minguez evokes precisely the nostalgic vision that Boym describes in which the era of the Movida is far simpler and more

authentic than the today:

Es conveniente recordar que en aquel

tiempo no habia telefonos m?viles ni ordenadores, y la musica era de



William Nichols 117

vinilo negro, justo antes del CD. La vida aun no era ciber ni digital, y nuestros contactos no eran virtuales,

sino analogicos.

On the previous page, he articulates a desire

to return not to a place or time, but to an in

nocent state of mind, an edenic being where

the world is new, "jComo me gustaria hojear este libro con los ojos de alguien que nunca

haya sabido de todo esto!" Mottos from

the time period, such as "Vale todo, Valen

todos," painted on the wall of the museum

likewise urge the visitor to contemplate the early 80s in Spain as a more peaceful, democratic, and socially tolerant era.

Entering Pablo Perez Mfnguez s exhi

bition at the Conde Duque immerses the

visitor not in the vibrant atmosphere of the

Movida but in a deep sense of nostalgia on a

personal and collective level. Where the title

of the exhibit, "Mi Movida," sets the nostal

gic tone of the exhibit as an intimate reflec

tion, music from such groups as Alaska y los Pegamoides, KK de Luxe, Radio Futura,

Orquesta Mondragon and others piped into

the museum space invites visitors, especially those in their forties and fifties, to imagine and reminisce about their own personal "Movidas." Moreover, the title of the ex

hibition, "Mi Movida," binds the visitor

in a series of ambiguous and contradictory

meanings regarding its intended message. On the one hand, the use of a possessive

adjective would seem to suggests Perez

Mfnguez's desire to take possession of the

past, asserting his authority and authenticity about the Movida. Yet, the same adjective

suggests not one overarching experience of

the Movida but many separate, fragmented "Movidas" that may or may not find points of commonality between them. On the last

page of the catalog Perez Mfnguez writes:

"En la Movida hubo muchas movidas. Todo

el mundo hizo su Movida. Esta es la mfa. Mi

Movida." He seems to invite the visitor not

to explore the collective experience of the

Movida but to indulge personal nostalgia of individual experiences almost as a sort

of isolated refuge. Even the image on the

cover of the catalog, which also covered a

wall at the entrance to the exhibit and was

used for the publicity materials and tickets, evokes the temporal disconnection with

the Movida through a keen self-awareness

of the viewers nostalgic gaze. The image shows Alaska, Pedro Almodovar and Fabio

McNamara, wearing make-up and dressed

in leather, posing for the poster for their

now famous concert on New Year s Eve of

1983 in the mythical heart of the Movida, Rock Ola. While the image recalls a specific event emblematic of the Movida, the ap

pearance of Almodovar with bushy hair and

make-up, kneeling at the feet of the vampish Alaska with his arms wrapped around her

fishnet-clad leg, contrasts sharply with the

image visitor s to the exhibit have today of

an Oscar-winning, salt-and-pepper-haired, tuxedo-clad Almodovar posing backstage at the Academy Awards with Antonio Ban

deras and Penelope Cruz.9

The exhibit of Perez Mfnguez's pho tos, then, recontextualizes and re-presents

the past in a way that upholds Douglas

Crimp's foucauldian analysis of museums

whose organization of knowledge depends upon an "archeological epistemology" (52) in which the selected objects displayed are

sustained "only by the fiction that they somehow constitute a coherent representa tional universe" (53). This representational intent, Crimp states, is based upon and

suggests a number of "metaphysical as

sumptions" (52) about the meaning of a

given society's "origins" and how they relate to that society's macrohistorical context.

The museum, Crimp asserts, represents




an institution of confinement, akin to the

prison and asylum studied by Foucault, its

edifice but "bric-a-brac," meaningless absent

the objects and the discourse of power that

their organization and order relates to the

observers who pass through its space. If

one accepts the museum as an institution

of confinement as Crimp describes it, then

its physical space might be understood not

necessarily as "bric-a-brac," but as a possible reflection of the museum's carceral purpose.

A union between discourse, ideology and

material culture, then, the museum becomes a social space, in the vein of Soja's notion

of Thirdspace, in which visitors engage and

interact with the institution's ideology as

they navigate its layout.10 Such a consider

ation of the interpenetration between the

material and the ideological is particularly

poignant when considering the exhibition

of Pablo Perez Mfnguez's photographs in

the Museo de Arte Contempor?neo de

Madrid in the Conde Duque. Commis

sioned by Felipe V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, in 1717, the Conde Duque's original purpose was to serve as military quarters for the elite Guardia de Corps who would escort and protect the king. At more than

50,000 square meters, it is one of the larg est buildings in Madrid but, ironically, one

of the least visible, and its location as well as its structure hint at the Conde Duque's

military past first as a barracks and later as

a military academy.11 Tucked away off the

Calle Princesa, the Conde Duque occupies a strategic military position just north of the

Plaza de Espana in Madrid up the hill from

the Palacio Real. Likewise, the building's architectural dimensions offer reminders

of its military past through a steep brick

facade, relatively few exterior windows, and only one public entrance. The Movidas

transgressive urbanness, its public openness, and an overt intention to provoke and shock

the bourgeois gaze of traditional Spain out of the closed, dark closet of its fascist, militaristic past (one only need recall the

infamous "concurso" organized and judged

by Almodovar himself in a public plaza in Malasana during a scene of Pepi, Luci, Bom) seem, then, to be part of an ideology at odds

with the confined, uninviting, virtually win

dowless space of the Conde Duque.

Tony Bennet, in The Birth of the Mu

seum, however, disagrees with Crimp argu

ing that, though they have objects enclosed

within a confined space, a museum weaves a

narrative of discipline and culture through exhibition, not confinement. Whereas

prisons and asylums replace public displays of power and discipline with incarceration, museums embody what Bennet refers to as

"the exhibitionary complex" in which en

closed objects from private collections with

restricted viewing by individuals became

increasingly open within a larger public arena. Though seemingly a move toward a

more democratic access to art and cultural

artifacts, museums in the nineteenth cen

tury served an "educative and civilizing" (66) function that effected a potent display of power through the rhetorical force of rep resentation and theatricality. Not a reverse

Panopticon, Bennet asserts, museums form

a "technology of vision" (68) that combines

surveillance with spectacle by inviting the

participation of working- and middle-class

visitors and controlling their gaze. The

museum, he explains, ultimately renders

the crowd visible to itself:12

The exhibitionary complex perfected a self-monitoring system of looks in which the subject and object posi tions can be exchanged, in which the crowd comes to commune with and

regulate itself through interiorizing the ideal and ordered view of itself



William Nichols 119

as seen from the controlling vision of power?a site of sight accessible to all. (69)

As a space of representation, the museum's

orientation is one of "show and tell," states

Bennet, where the constructed order of

things exerts a moral and cultural regula tion by fabricating a totalizing narrative of a mythical "we." As opposed to the display of monstrosities and curiosities of the side

show and carnivals, the museum offered a

civilizing space with a "rationalizing effect"

(74) that would efface the perception of class

difference and foment a notion of nation.

One wonders then, what the "rationalizing effect" is on the perceived hedonistic at

titudes and carivalesque tendencies of the

Movida when the visitor, strolling through the space at the Conde Duque, reads

mottoes like "Lo que no da morbo, es un

estorbo" painted in large fluorescent colors on the wall. As I suggested earlier, and Ben

net mentions here, the exhibit channels the

crowd's gaze to view itself through images

organized to construct a narrative of other

ness that not only exoticizes the Movida

and its ideology but tames its iconoclasm

by rendering the protagonists as hyperbolic caricatures whose perceived frivolity seem

ingly holds little relevance for the worries

of today's Spain. Yet, this distance, both

temporal and cultural, from the Movida

allows for the period to be re-presented in

official discourse through a nostalgic lens

that offers the era, because of its perceived innocence and frivolity, as a utopic, edenic

time to which Spain yearns to return.

LA MOVIDA as Spectacle and Heritage

If Pablo Perez Mfnguez's "Mi Movida"

exposition exemplifies the seemingly con

tradictory, yet paradoxically complemen try, impulses of a museum exhibit that is

both carceral and exhibitionary, then the

retrospective "homenaje" organized by the

Direccion General de Archivos, Museos y Bibliotecas in the Consejerfa de Cultura

y Deportes of the Comunidad de Madrid

simply titled "LA MOVIDA" might be

perceived as a commemoration akin more

to Malraux's "museum without walls."

Though the commemoration is presented in

the program of events as a "reconocimiento

postumo" (3) of a generation whose creative

vitality paralleled that of the Generation of

27, the retrospective sought to "revivir la

efervescencia de aquellos anos" (4) by imi

tating the dynamic cultural atmosphere of

the Movida through a series of expositions, concerts, round-table discussions, readings, and audiovisual projections that explore the

diversity of aesthetic expression in Spain dur

ing the 1980s, including film, photography, graphic design, video, fashion and various

forms of writing such as poetry and novel as well as comics and fanzines.13 This self

proclaimed "homenaje," then, literally seeks

to revive the Movida by reuniting many of its protagonists in musical performances by such rock groups as Loquillo y los Troglodi tas, Siniestro Total, Glutamato Ye-Ye, and

Aviador Dro. Similarly, well-known names

associated with the Movida such as Carlos

Serrano, Pablo Perez Mfnguez, Guillermo

Perez Villalta, Nacho Garcia Vega, Borja Casani, el Gran Wyoming and Carmen

Maura, among many others, participated in round-table discussions and workshops that offered first-hand reflections on the

importance and the impact of the Movida

in its various aesthetic manifestations from

fashion and music to graphic design and

architecture to film and video production.14

Screenings of iconic films from the era of

the Movida like Ivan Zulueta's "Arrebato"




(1980), Fernando Colomo's ",;Que hace una chica como tu en un sitio como este?"

(1978), and Almodovar's "Pepi, Lud, Born

y otras chicas del mont?n" (1980) among others, as well as projections of television

series like "Bola de cristal" and "Edad de

Oro" along with "videoclips" of the Movidas most representative groups offer visual cues

that recall the cultural production of the

1980s in Spain.15 Exhibits of photos, origi nal autographed lyrics, poems and novels,

fanzines, fashion, architecture, and graphic and industrial design put on display the rel

ics and artifacts from the Movida perceived to reveal, as Bianca Sanchez, the project's commissioner, asserts, an "actitud abierta

y cosmopolita." Between November 29, 2006 and February 17, 2007, the Comu

nidad de Madrid organized 7 expositions, 17 round-tables, 18 concerts, 1 film series

(that included 36 feature-length films), 2

audiovisual series (57 episodes of "Bola de

cristal" and 30 episodes of "Edad de oro"), and 2 workshops (on fashion design and

jewelry) that took place in several locations

throughout Madrid, all property of the

Comunidad de Madrid, including the Sala

de Exposiciones Alcal? 31, Sala de Exposi ciones del Canal de Isabel II, Sala de Exposi ciones del Complejo El Aguila, the Pabell?n

de Cristal in the Casa de Campo, Sala el

Sol, the Salon de Actos of the Consejerfa de Cultura y Deportes, and the Cfrculo de

Bellas Artes. Trie commemorative celebra

tion even included a touring exposition with a "planteamiento fundamentalmente

did?ctico" (33) structured around three

ideas perceived to unite the diverse musical

groups of the movida: modernity, urban

life, and hedonism. Included in this exhibit were visual pieces (fanzines, ticket stubs, re

cord covers, photographs, etc.), audiovisual

projections of videos and scenes from "Bola

de cristal," and panels with lyrics from the

most well-known songs of the era. A kind

of traveling "cabinet of curiosities," this

exposition visited various cities throughout the Comunidad de Madrid from Arganda del Rey and Torrejon de Ardoz to Mostoles

and San Lorenzo de El Escorial in order to

"dar una idea de los rasgos definitorios del

movimiento a los que no estuvieron allf"

(33). Not solely exhibitionary like the Pablo

Perez-Minguez "Mi movida" exposition, "LA MOVIDA" literally resuscitates the era of the movida in performative spaces

by reuniting famous musical groups from

the early 1980s as well as spaces one might describe as reflective, such as the round-table

discussions, where many of the protagonists of the era expressly sought to "analizar en

profundidad la genesis, el significado y la

repercusion del fenomeno" (4) by offering first-hand accounts, recalling their experi ences, and describing the cultural atmo

sphere in overt acts of metamemory that

willingly engage nostalgia for the bygone period.16 Yet, while the exhibit of Perez Mfn

guez photos at the Conde Duque distanced

the visitor from the past in a pantheon-like

atmosphere, the Comunidad de Madrid's

"LA MOVIDA" sought to liberate itself

of the stifling confines of the museum and

its distancing effects on the viewer by de

centering the commemoration through a

variety of activities, concerts, discussions, and exhibits distributed among various

locations throughout the city. Moreover, by

directly involving many of those that par

ticipated in the cultural production of the

Movida, the exposition sought to simulate

the fervent activity and the vibrant cultural

mood of the 1980s in Madrid. Thus, though "LA MOVIDA" may well be considered a

kind of "museum without walls" it falls quite short of the "ironic museum" that Stephen Bann describes in The Clothing of Clio that



William Nichols 121

"would support alternative readings or

versions of the exhibited objects" (qtd. in

Fehr 35). Quite the contrary, though "LA

MOVIDA" purports to exhibit, reflect upon and even perform the Movida from various

vantage points so the viewer may grasp the profundity and expanse of the cultural

production in Spain in the early 1980s, the

de-centered nature of the exposition appears more encyclopedic and less democratic fall

ing into what Alberto Villamandos terms

"las trampas de la nostalgia" (459). In his article, "Las trampas de la nos

talgia: la gauche divine de Barcelona en su

producci?n literaria," Villamandos begins with an examination of a retrospective

photo exhibit about the gauche divine that was sponsored in 2000 by the Ministerio

de Educacion y Cultura, at the time under

the direction of future PP presidential candidate Mariano Rajoy. Villamandos de

scribes the gauche divine as a heterogeneous

group of progressive young intellectuals

and professionals from the Catalan and

Spanish-speaking bourgeoisie who rejected both the official Francoist culture and the

strict ideology of the militant Communist

opposition. Comprised of poets, novelists, film directors, architects, publicists, models

and actresses, singers and even Snowflake, the albino gorilla in the Barcelona zoo that

served as muse to the gauche divine, Villa

mandos asserts the gauche divine as symbolic of the squizofrenic era of late Francoism

"a caballo entre el desarrollo economico

y el anquilosamiento del regimen, boom

turfstico y tecnocratas, minifalda o sotana"

(459). With an attitude of frivolity, the

gauche divine, states Villamandos, sought to subvert the institutions most closely af

filiated with official Francoist culture?fam

ily, education and religion?while also

undermining the self-righteous seriety of

the bourgeois class by imitating cultural

models outside Spain's borders. Yet, what

Villamandos signals is the progressive nos

talgic idealization of the gauche divine that, because of their ludic rather than militant

nature, has been recovered and reworked

into a "relato mitico" (460) told both by the conservative PP and in the autobiographies of many of the groups former members.

Converted into spectacle, concludes Villa

mandos, the complex history of the gauche divine is glossed over with a nostalgic filter

that "esconde las contradicciones o derrotas"

(477) with a mythic narrative of Spain's democratic origins in a perceived "epoca dorada" (477).

The movida, similar to what Villa

mandos describes about the gauche divine, has also been easily appropriated by Spain's conservative political party (the PP) be

cause, not in spite, of its perceived frivolity, its inclination toward the ludic rather than

the political, and its indulgence of hedonis

tic excesses. With overt sponsorship from

the Ayuntamiento de Madrid, in the case

of Perez-Mmguez's exhibition of photos, and the Comunidad de Madrid, in the

case of LA MOVIDA, politicians of Spain's conservative PP?Alberto Ruiz Gallardon

and Esperanza Aguirre?have supported the reappropriation of the Movida (with the aid of such corporate sponsors as Caja

Duero and the collaboration of media out

lets like Telemadrid, RTVE and RNE 3) to weave a narrative about the mythic origins of Spain's modernity. In her introduction to the catalog published subsequent the

commemorative events, Esperanza Aguirre,

president of the Comunidad de Madrid,

ambiguously describes the importance of

the retrospective homage to the Movida

to "dejar constancia del valor aportado a

nuestro patrimonio cultural por aquellos creadores." Stripped of its underlying politi cal, social, generational, cultural, sexual, and




even class tensions,17 the Movida acquires a

superficial spectacularity as simply an "estal

lido de creatividad" easily quantified by its

enduring relics she enumerates as "cuadros,

fotograffas, canciones, pelfculas" that allow us to "comprender el espfritu de aquellos dfas, tan marcados por la ilusion, y valorar

la energfa expresiva de sus protagonistas y la originalidad de sus propuestas" (27).18

Moreover, Aguirre remaps the cultural

geography of the Movida by ignoring the

expansive influence of the Movida in other

regional capitals of Spain and offering Ma

drid as its protagonist, not the stage, the

image and name of which the Movida had

successfully exported and spread through out the world. In essence, Aguirre inverts

the flow of cultural production associated

with the Movida to assert Madrid's entrance

and influence on a global stage rather than

to recognize the importation of models

external to Spain that affected music, film,

photography, fashion and more during the

1980s. The Comunidad de Madrid's "LA

MOVIDA" commemoration, then, offers an over-arching narrative about the mythic

origins19 of Spain's modernity that posits the Movida as a spectacle of "ebullicion

creativa" on an international scale that pre cedes subsequent spectacles that attract an

international gaze: the World Cup in 1982, the Expo in Seville in 1992, the Barcelona

Olympics in 1992, the 1997 opening of the Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry, and, most recently, attempts by government officials in Madrid to attract the Olympics, first for 2012 and now for 2016. The ex

pressed desire to "transmitir ese momento de

ebullicion creativa" (Programa 4) as part of

Spain's, and more specifically Madrid's, his

torical memory20 so as to "tender un puente entre el pasado y el presente, con vistas al

futuro" (12) effectively elides the Movida's

irreverent, subversive counter-cultural past to mark it, instead, as a key moment in

Spain's national heritage that initiates the

country on a cultural trajectory of spec tacular global influence. The Comunidad de

Madrid's desire to re-enact the spectacle (or

spectre) of the Movida through film screen

ings, concerts, round-table discussions,

expositions, and workshops throughout Madrid corresponds with Kevin Walsh's

analysis, in The Representation of the Past:

Museums and Heritage in the Post-modern

World, of such open-air heritage museums as

Colonial Williamsburg, Greenfield Village, and even Disneyland that "bring the past to

life" by placing the visitor in an "environ

ment of nostalgia-arousal" (98). Though

they simulate the past, such sites of nostalgia eliminate lingering remnants of conflict

or anti-social behavior to offer a calming

landscape whose entertaining spectacle of

the past offers a ludic escape from both the

imposing confines of a museum's private spaces or the worries of contemporary ev

eryday life. The heritage spectacle, asserts

Walsh, numbs our historical sensibilities

and engages the desire to escape the present with the promotion of empathy through

artificiality of locations and objects that

are both out of place and out of time. De

spite the desire to bridge the past, present, and future as expressed in the program of

events for "LA MOVIDA," the notion that

a viewer may gain first-hand experience of

the past not only promotes "the idea that

we can travel back in time" or that "the

providers of heritage 'know' the past" but, more importantly, asserts Walsh, "belies the

fact that all our pasts are constructed in the

present" (102). Such emphasis on spectacle over education thwarts, concludes Walsh, the idea of history as process and transforms

it into an exploitable simulacra:



William Nichols 123

Empathy or

fist-person interpreta tion denies the existence of history as

process, which moves from the past

through the present and into the fu ture. It promotes synchronous pasts,

where all our pasts exist as assests to

be stripped and exploited purely for their surfaces. (104)21

Conclusion: Mapping the Past

Through the re-creation and re-presentation of the Movida, the organizers and politicians affiliated with the expositions sponsored and

arranged by the Ayuntamiento de Madrid

and the Comunidad de Madrid offer less

an honest inquiry into the tense years after

Franco that characterized political, social,

cultural, artistic, and even sexual transitions

in Spanish society during the 1970s and 80s,

but more so project a nostalgic rendering of the period, its iniquities cleansed and its

contradictions resolved, that is fetishized by a present seeking an escape to the mythic ori

gins of an artificial past. Both exhibits, Perez

Mfnguez's "Mi Movida" and "LA MOV

IDA" commissioned by Bianca Sanchez,

exemplify Wolfgang Ernst's notion of the museum as a discourse whose conception is

both cognitive and material. For Ernst, mu

seums map memory "by collecting, invento

rying, storing, processing, and transferring data" as integral part of an "epistemological

grid" that renders the physical space of the

museum a "text-related space" that makes

the visitor's world "readable" (17-18).22 At

the heart of the museum expositions on the

Movida, then, is a discourse of power that

authenticates the nostalgic normalization

of an institutionalized representation and

forges the collective historical consciousness

of that period in recent Spanish history by

fetishizing the past and rendering it the

Utopian escape sought by the present.

Notes 1 Their adventure leads them, for example,

to Warner Brothers Movie World Madrid, now

known as Parque Warner, a theme park in San Martin de la Vega about 25 kilometers southeast of Madrid. The theme park, with such roller coasters as

Superman, Batman, and Scooby

Doo, might be understood as a microcosm of

Spain in the film, where public space becomes defined by corporate, commercial interests.

2 Though not set during the 80s, the pro

tagonist in Benjamin Prado's Mala gente que camina does often reflect on his experiences during the Movida in Madrid.

3 The Movida has not been the only phe nomenon of the Spain's Transition period to be the focus of museum expositions. Under the

auspices of the Sociedad Estatal para Conme moraciones Culturales (SECC), museum expo sitions like "Mano a mano. La Constitucion de

la Espana democratica" at the Centro Cultural de la Villa during 2003 celebrated Spain's 1978 Constitution and recall the origins of Spain's democracy by offering the document not as an

emblem of Spain's transition to democracy but

setting it literally as the driving catalyst for the

social, political, economic, aesthetic, and emo

tional changes in Spain over the last 25 years. Likewise, expositions like "Libert@dexpresi6n. es" and "Cuatro dimensiones" (also organized

by the SECC) along with commemorative cel ebrations of 25 years of democracy during 2002 and 2003, project an official understanding of

Spain's modern identity by advancing specific, institutionalized visions of the past.

4 The Movida has even become a subject of interest in academic conferences like the Modern

Language Association, where this paper was first

presented in 2008, in a panel titled "Exploring the Cultural Archives of the Movida."

5 Ouka Lele, another of the important pho tographers associated with the Movida, won the same award in 2005, offering another indication of the "normalized," if not legitimized view of the Movida and its protagonists.

6 A "diapo-party," also known as a foto-fi

esta, is where slides (diapositivas) are projected with background music in a kind of media that




constructs a narrative through the sequence of

images with a sort of soundtrack, combining still photos, the movement of film, and the emotional effect of music.

7 Absent from the display of Pablo Perez

Mfnguez's photos is the sense of transgression,

especially the violation of sexual mores and iden

tity, so central to the Movidas counter-cultural

attitude. Even photos of Bibi Andersen, the iconic transexual of the Movida, appears in her

most effeminate poses in the portraits, seemingly assigning her a gender identity and undermining her own subversion of assigned gender roles and sexual identity. And images of transvestism pres ent the most "glam" of Perez Mfnguez's photos so as to not provoke

or question the perceived

stability of gender and sexual identity. Absent also are the ideological debates over Spain's en

try into modernity or postmodernity, and what that meant, often found in the pages of such

magazines as La Luna de Madrid. 8 For Barthes, photos inherently direct the

viewer to the past rather than the present, elic

iting a kind of awareness that "establishes not a consciousness of the being-there of the thing but an awareness of its having-been-there" (44).

Photos, then, asserts a new, ironic space-time

category, a curious combination of "spatial im

mediacy and temporal anteriority" (44). The combination of physical presence and temporal disconnection that Barthes describes is especially relevant to Perez Mfnguez's "Mi movida" exhi

bition. The photograph as a re-presentation,

Barthes asserts, is a "message without a code"

(36) to which the viewer assigns meaning based

upon their own cultural knowledge, historical

circumstances, and ideological perception. 9 Despite his appearance in several of Perez

Mfnguez's photographs, Almod?var 's absence in

the exhibition materials, particularly the catalog, is conspicuous. Where Alaska, Antonio Luis de

Villena, and others have included mini-articles that offer reflections on the Movida, none by

Almod?var can be found. However, in the ex

position itself, Almodovar's ghost literally lurks behind the corners in the Conde Duque, his shadow seemingly looming over any discussion of the Movida. At a certain moment, the viewer

is situated alongisde a false wall and as he nears

the photograph in front of him, a mirror next to the photograph reveals a life-size cut-out of

Almodovar with his arms raised as if he intended to jump from behind the wall to pounce on

the viewer. 10 Nevertheless, Carol Duncan suggests the

museum environment, its physical space, is as

important as the ordering of the objects found within its walls because the space itself, far from neutral or invisible, acquires a ritualistic quality that engages the visitor and offers "values and beliefs?about social, sexual and political iden

tity?in the form of vivid and direct experience" (2). The physical space of the museum, then, becomes the setting for ritual; one culturally defined that imposes specific rules for accept able social behavior, demands a sense of silent

decorum, and is reserved for a specific kind of focus?contemplation, introspection, and

learning (10). 11 Information about the history of the Conde Duque structure was obtained from the center's official webpage

at <http://www.esma

drid.com/condeduque/portal.do>. 12

It is the sense of introspection, states

Duncan, that endows the ritualistic space of the

museum with liminality, a key characteristic of ritual. She cites the famous anthropologist Vic

tor Turner, who describes moments of liminality in which "individuals can step back from the

practical concerns and social relations of every

day life and look at them and their world?or at some aspect of it?with different thoughts and feelings" (11). For Duncan, reasons often attributed to the symbolic power of ritual match

up closely with the stated purpose of the art museums in the Western world: enlightenment,

revelation, spiritual equilibrium, or rejuvenation (20). The contemplation of Perez-Mfnguez's photos within a symbolically charged ritualistic

space, then, allows viewers to engage not the past

but their sense of self, collectively and individu

ally, to create a mythic narrative of rejuvenation

through the music, mottos, and photos of the Movida.

131 would like to thank Marcela T. Garces, a doctoral student at the University of Min



William Nichols 125

nesota who was kind enough to pass along to me her copies of the program of events for "LA

MOVIDA," which have aided me tremendously in writing this article.

14 Again, conspicuously absent from the

round-table discussions or the first-person nar

ratives in the catalog is Pedro Almod?var. 15

Screenings also included films from outside Spain that influenced Spanish cultural

production in the 1980s, such as David Lynch's "Eraserhead" (1979), Andy Warhol's "Flesh"

(1969), Tony Scott's "The Hunger," and Slava Tsukerman's sci-fi punk cult classic "Liquid Sky" (1982).

16 The catalog published from the "LA MOVIDA" exposition is simultaneously ency

clopedic and autobiographical in its presenta tion. With fluorescent colors on black pages, the introduction and table of contents reduce the Movida to a series of categories that include: "Artes Pl?sticas," "Fotograffa," "M?sica," "Dis

eno Grafico," "Arquitectura y Diseno Industrial,"

"Moda," "Letras," and "Cine." Interspersed

throughout these sections are random quotes

from participants and first-hand accounts from

still-living protagonists of the era that assert

their authority in establishing the verity of their

memory. 17

Even Bianca Sanchez, the project's com

missioner and a participant in the Movida, opts to ignore the dark side of the Movida, specifically the vices associated with it, namely with drug abuse (and AIDS as one of the consequences of it), at the conclusion of her introduction in

the catalog: El sida irrumpio en La Movida, como en el resto del mundo, de

forma inesperada y contribuyo a desinflar aquellas fuertes emo

ciones y entristecer aquel mundo

tan divertido. Las drogas, ya en

plan heavy, tambien pusieron su

granito de arena para que todo

fuese mucho mas diffcil. Aunque es un tema recurrente en todo ese

penodo, no quiero recordar todas

las "ruinas" que originaron a tantos

amigos. (22)

18 In his Memoria hist?rica e identidad cultural (2005), Jose Colmeiro ironically sees

the perpetuation of Spain's discontinuity with its past in recent commemorations, museum

expositions, and monuments which character

ize an "inflation y devaluation de la memoria"

(19). Especially through the commodification of such ideologically charged emblems as Guernica and the Valle de los Caidos memory, declares

Colmeiro, become fetishized as a "gestualidad espectacular" (22) designed for tourism and

consumption, eviscerating such icons of their

ideology and ultimately augmenting the sense

of fragmentation and discontinuity. 19 The fact that this exposition's title is always

published in all caps as "LA MOVIDA" attests to the perceived mythic importance and monu

mental dimensions attributed to the period. 20 Marking the 70th anniversary of the begin

ning of the Spanish Civil War, 2006 was officially declared the Year of Historical Memory. 21 Such exploitation of the Movida may well be argued in the case of the "LA MOVIDA"

exposition that was connected to, and served

as a springboard for, "Madrid 06," a series of

concerts, screenings, expositions, and readings of new but anonymous artists that represent a "nueva generation de creadores que viven y

trabajan en Madrid" for whom "Madrid 06" would be an "escaparate de tendencias y facili tar el encuentro de los artistas con su publico"

(Catdlogo 64). Blatantly marketing the fame of the Movida, such groups as Spam, Alma-X,

Superputa, and Virus, young writers like Paula Cifuentes and Ernesto Perez Zuniga; artists

such as Daniel Silvo or Elena Bajo; and fashion

designers like Potipoti or Carlos Diez were

branded and sold as members of the so-called "Removida" in Madrid.

22 Ernst's idea is similar to what Jameson termed "cognitive mapping" that, though applied to

geographical space, may be used in any coor

dination between real and read information in

interpreting one's "place" in the world: "Cogni tive mapping in a broader sense comes to require the coordination of existential data (empirical position of the subject) with unlived abstract

conceptions of the geographic totality" (52).




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