Madrid and the movida: National and regional identity in the center, 1979--1992

Despite the tendency to relate Madrid with national identity and the peripheral areas of Spain, such as the Basque Country and Catalonia, with regional identity, this dissertation argues that the capital also experienced its own form of regionalism after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. Specifically, there was a space in the first half of the 1980s where the local and regional administrations of Madrid undertook a broad project to distance the capital from its authoritarian past and foster new democratic affiliations among all madrilenos.;As in the other areas of the country, this process of establishing a new democratic identity after the demise of the dictatorship came in the form of a regional identity project because all forms of nationalism were perceived as illegitimate in the post-Francoist period. However, unlike many of the regions on Spain's 'periphery,' Madrid did not have the ability to return to a local cultural tradition, mainly because it had been tainted by the capital's association with the Franco regime. Instead, an inclusive and uniquely 'modern' image of Madrid was promoted as the foundation for a new civic regional identity. While the refurbishment of Madrid's infrastructure and the restoration of its crumbling monuments constituted a major part of the program to create a new kind of madrilenismo, a contemporary cultural movement---known as the movida madrilena ---played an equally important role. The promotion of this colorful, and at times chaotic, movement proved to be an essential piece in the development of Madrid's new civic identity based on inclusion and greater cultural mobilization.;The project to create a new regional identity in Madrid thus demonstrates that the movida madrilena was not simply part of a generalized or belated cultural renaissance in Spain after 1975. It also helps to highlight Spain's specific path to democratic consolidation over the course of the 1980s. Most importantly, evidence of regionalism in Madrid calls into question the almost universally accepted center-periphery model of identity formation, at least in the Spanish context, and points to the creation of a democratic 'multiple' identity across all regions of Spain in the wake of the dictatorship.