S.O.P. Madrid - La Movida Madrileña on World Cafe
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Sense of Place: How a wild boom of creativity took hold of post-Franco Madrid
As you’re walking around Madrid, it’s hard to imagine what this vibrant, artistic city would have been like in the early 1970s. While the seeds of punk music were taking root in the U.K. and North America, Spain was still under the decades-long repressive rule of the dictator Francisco Franco.
Franco had banned homosexuality and abortion, and his regime presided over the censorship of practically all cultural output in the country. The censors banned songs like The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and CSNY’s “Ohio.”
So when Franco died in 1975, an explosion of creativity soon took hold of the country and Madrid, in particular. It became known as La Movida Madrileña, and musician Servando Carballar was there for all of it.
“In the moment it was happening,” he says, “Madrid was the most fun city in the world.”
In this installment of our Sense of Place series on Madrid, Carballar shares his memories from La Movida, including founding one of Spain’s first electro pop bands, Aviador Dro, and later starting the indie label Dro Records, which became home to many of the musicians that flourished during La Movida.