1975: year zero of the counterculture

At least, long

(Silex Ediciones) will serve to correct the chronology of the Spanish

.

The new book by Edi Clavo —remember, drummer for Gabinete Caligari— starts from the somber communication of the death of Francisco Franco to then loop the loop and establish the remarkable variety of countercultural offer in the first half of the seventies, of the

-type magazines

.

It is true that it overlaps with previous books (

, by Jordi Costa) and that it complements the testimonies of protagonists (

, by Pau

Maragall).

More information

The counterculture and us, who loved it so much

Those who did not live through those years and those clandestinities legitimately wondered what “the roll” consisted of.

Simplifying, it was equivalent to rock and everything that accelerated around it in the Spain of the dictatorship.

Edi Clavo portrays the moment of the collision: “The spearhead of a deaf revolt, an unstoppable missile against the Francoist bunker that he saw disappearing, between stupor and impotence, the ethics of the

, the camp state and the influence of the cassocks [….] slogans and noises, shouts and distortions, smoke, ways and manners of the

, or what around here could be understood by all that;

a hasty and incomplete change of what it was like to be in the limelight…in short, in Rollo”.

We tend to portray the years of the Franco regime as a cultural wasteland, when the reality is that —outside the official channels— clearly subversive initiatives arose, more or less silently.

Edi Clavo recalls that Andy Warhol's graphic work was presented in Spain for the first time at Barcelona's Galería G, in 1975-1976, eight years before his ostentatious arrival at Madrid's Fernando Vijande gallery.

He also adds one more festival, Marbella Rock, to the very famous mass gatherings that were held in Burgos and Canet in 1975.

In fits and starts, cursed films like

or

were being released .

The same thing happened with books and records, although it was easy to hide the intervention of censorship, cutting pages and songs (sometimes, the covers were also changed, which makes them expensive collector's items on the international market today).

However, there are no recorded cultural battles or denunciations of conclaves of Christian lawyers: everything that was published was sold in the Corte Inglés or Galerías Preciados (and what did not cross the border was served in the back of bookstores or, in the case of of records, in El Rastro or similar markets).

Although there was some nonsense.

ETA undertook a campaign — bombs included — against the Pamplona Encounters of 1972, which brought together Luis de Pablo and José Luis Alexanco with distinguished figures of the sound avant-garde: John Cage, Steve Reich, David Tudor.

The ETA members even spread a pamphlet portraying it as "an event masked as progressivism sold to the bourgeoisie" (it was sponsored by the Huarte family).

The reality is that, apart from certain singer-songwriters, music then lacked political connotations and that explains the relative abundance of rock programs (and jazz and flamenco) that could be seen on TVE's Segunda Cadena.

In the same way that private radios worked, forced to differentiate the programming of the Onda Media from that offered in its Modulated Frequency: nothing cheaper than summoning a few kids to the FM who had a good private disco and a modest cheeky .

But, pay attention, from the corresponding ministry they listened carefully to what was said.

On Onda 2, the announcer Luis Mario Quintana was sanctioned when he gave way to the noon news program of Radio Nacional, with mandatory connection, with an immortal phrase: "And now comes the talk."

Isn't that him

that Edi Clavo refers to in his fast-paced book.

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