Remaking Madrid: Culture, Politics, and Identity After Franco

Remaking Madrid is the first full-length study of Madrid's transformation from the dreary home of the Franco dictatorship into a modern and vibrant city. It argues that this remarkable transformation in the 1980s helped secure Spain's fragile transition to democracy and that the transformation itself was primarily a product of "regionalism"-even though the capital is typically associated with "Spanishness" and with "the nation." The official project to distance Madrid from its dictatorial past included urban renewal and administrative reform; but, above all, it involved greater cultural participation, which led the revival of the capital's public festivals and the development of a modern cultural outpouring known as the movida madrile a. The book also explains the ultimate failure of regionalism in the capital by the end of the 1980s and asks whether or not Madrid's inclusive form of "civic" identity might have served as a model for the country as a whole.

Author: H. Stapell
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 10/18/2010
Pages: 276
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780230106413

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2011

About the Author
HAMILTON STAPELL is an Assistant Professor of History at State University of New York at New Paltz, USA.