Fragments and Fantasies of Freedom: Queer Cultural Production during the Spanish Transition (1975-1982)

This dissertation studies queer cultural production during Spain’s Transition to democracy (1975-1982), a period marked by both euphoric possibility and political discord. While conventional historiographies often present the Transition as a successful and peaceful transfer of power from dictatorship to democracy, this project foregrounds the voices and visions that resisted this official narrative. Each of these selected works—rooted in transgression, fantasy, and refusal—challenges the normative temporality and heteronormative structures promoted during the Transition, proposing instead alternative, queer visions and utopian horizons. In particular, this project addresses how these queer artists envision what the future of Spain could be, as seen through their own distinctive and divergent perspectives. At its core, this project has three principal concerns: (1) how these queer and divergent individuals see Spain’s political apparatus during the Transition in terms of how it might evolve in the future; (2) how these conceptions are informed and shaped by their relationship to queerness in ways that deviate from the prevailing attitudes of the Transition period—which may be positive or negative; (3) and how shaping the queer archive of the Transition allows for a more profound understanding of Spain’s current cultural and political landscape. Through the use of a variety of media such as film, narrative, comics, performance art, and ephemera such as flyers and magazines, I examine how these interventions conceive a radical and queer future, while tracing the successes and failures of these visions. The primary source materials include the cinematographic work of film collective Els 5 QKs; Lluís Fernàndez’s novel L’anarquista nu (1979); the film Arrebato (1979) by Iván Zulueta; and Jesús Garay’s feature film Manderley (1981), featuring queer performance artist José Pérez Ocaña.

Author dc:creator

• Daniel Everhart (23291389)

• Spanish Transition to Democracy
• Queer and Trans Cinema

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.25417/uic.31451155.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/31451155