Date of Award

6-2012

Document Type

Union College Only

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Modern Languages and Literatures

First Advisor

Christine Henseler

Language

Spanish

Keywords

punk, Generation X, Spain, social liberation, la movida

Abstract

With the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, Spain revealed itself as politically and culturally behind other European nations. That being said, Spain looked to the cultural styles of Great Britain and the United States in order to catch up. Consequently, Spain gradually implemented a punk approach to life. With the arrival of the 80’s, la movida madrileña became a youth movement in Spain that incorporated punk in the form of music to express the political and social liberation of the time. The do-it-yourself attitude and the cultural dependence on sex, drugs and rock and roll traversed temporal boundaries, characterizing la movida until its end and bursting onto the Generation X scene with the beginning of the 90’s. As the punk subculture consumed the adolescents of Generation X, it further evolved, becoming rooted in Spain’s contemporary youth culture. Through the punk aesthetic, Generation X rebelled against the hegemonic culture that was imposed upon its adherents, resulting in a negative label that defined the youth culture. In Historias del Kronen, José Ángel Mañas manipulated the punk subculture in order to create a literary device that possessed the same characteristics. Mañas successfully applied a punk literary technique to contemporary Spanish literature; by doing so, he captured the unfavorable status of young people and brought to light the generational gap that affected Spain in the 90’s. In the form of both a subculture and a literary style, punk undoubtedly left its mark on Spain’s contemporary youth culture.

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