Status Updates From Madrid: A New Biography

Much as it spoke to a limited audience, la movida was part of the reinvention of Madrid as a dynamic and expansive capital, one the thousands of children of migrants from other parts of Spain could proudly call their home. Madrid was no longer the remedy to their parents’ lives, but the starting point for their own.

“From the very first moment, Madrid was the city I had been looking for.”
- Julio Llamazares

Fighting against traitors within and invaders without, as Antonio Machado put it; Madrid as heroic city of resistance was not a myth but a tradition, dating back to the times of Napoleon.

During the opening months of the war, its defiant role—Madrid as the international front line against fascism—had been an inspiration to thousands around the world: a capital city destined to fall had refused to do so and, as support for the city gathered and its resistance hardened, the effects of its stubborn, courageous first months under siege ripped out across the world.

From the reign of Carlos III to the death of Franco are two centuries of enormous upheaval and conflict, of change and suffering, and of the survival and reinvention of a great city. These are remarkable years, at the end of which Madrid emerged, with a shout and a scream, and came roaring back into the world.