The political period between the death of dictator Francisco Franco in November 1975 and the victory of the Socialist Party (PSOE) in the general election of 1982, widely known as the Transición, has been held up by many as a model of successful political transformation from an authoritarian regime to a democratic government. Yet criticisms of this period abound, and discussions of the means and ends of this political and cultural transformation continue. Previous historical, literary, and cultural studies have emphasised the imperfect nature of the Transición's accomplishments, and many critics contend that essential political, socioeconomic, and cultural changes, necessary to transform a post-dictatorial society, were not tackled directly by the politicians of the time. Indeed, the 1980s are commonly understood as years of disenchantment, trauma, and melancholy during which Spaniards struggled with the vestiges of Franco's regime.

More than 30 years after the Transición, recollections of this period are beginning to resurface. The visual and literary texts I examine in this book are representative of this renewed attention and, while the selection of works I present is certainly not exhaustive, they share an important generational imprint. The experiences of their creators, born into the same cohort, can be traced through their complex cultural representations and critical discussions of the (memory of the) Spanish Civil War, the dictatorship, and the transition. These authors and artists are familiar with trauma and understand the complexities and politics involved in the act of remembering. Their work exposes the evolution that has taken place in the treatment of memory, through which Spain's political past has become a flexible referent with multiple connotations with (and to) the present. The persistence of (and the renewed insistence on) this connection to the present in recollections of the past demands a closer look—one that takes into account the specificities of a cohort of Spanish artists who came of age in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.