Remaking Madrid Culture, Politics, and Identity after Franco [Paperback]

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.Constructing Geographical Identities in Democratic Spain after 1978 Recovering from the Past: The Problem of Remaking Madrid after the Dictatorship From a 'Fortress' to a 'Plaza': The Transformation of Madrid and the Formation of a New Civic Identity Cultural Mobilization and the Civic Identity Project in the Capital Just a 'Teardrop in the Rain'? The movida madrile?a and a New Democratic Regional Identity Your Same Old Madrid: The Changing Face of the Capital, 1979-1986 Not Your Same 'New' Madrid: The End of the Regional Identity Project and Changing Forms of Identification in the Capital, 1986-1991 Spain's Democratic Consolidation and Madrid as an Alternative National Model

Stapell offers an important study of post-Franco regime Madrid and its transformation from the dreary, mismanaged political capital of the dictatorship to the dynamic, cultural (and political) center of both the Autonomous Region of Madrid and the Spanish nation by the early 1990s. The book is highly readable, logically organized, andl/