Look back at anger

Nostalgia, like knife fights, frequent heroin use and car chases, can be a very dangerous thing. Then again, it can also be fun.

The CCCB exhibition ‘Quinquis dels 80: Cinema, Premsa i Carrer’ takes a tender look at the ‘quinqui’ phenomenon. A quinqui was a specific brand of Spanish juvenile delinquent who came of age in the post-Franco wasteland, knee deep in unemployment, drug use and crime, both petty and otherwise. (As my friend Pere pointed out, “you can’t mythologise these guys; they weren’t good people.”)

Yet good or bad, they left an indelible mark on Spanish society. Literal poster children, the young ruffians came to be the personification of societal growing pains of the time while simultaneously being glamorised in popular culture like the gang bangers of American rapdom.

In the Sixties, residents of rundown inner city neighbourhoods were herded into quickly built, slipshod council estates on the city outskirts. These new neighbourhoods became (as usual) bleak, crime-ridden places. They also provided fodder for film-makers and the tabloid press, even spawning their own cinematic genre. Between 1978 and 1985, 30 films were made with seedy titles like Rapists of the Dawn and Drugged Youth.

True to the show’s title, the exhibition examines the reality on the street and its representation in media and popular culture. Movie posters stand beside information on the Spanish prison system and emblematic neighbourhoods like Barcelona’s La Mina and Bilbao’s Otxarkoaga. In a poster for South Barcelona, the Raval looks like a scene from Blade Runner.

At times, the exhibition reads like A Quinqui Handbook, even including a glossary of slang (e.g. estéreo meant two kilos of hash). Two visitors appeared to be taking mental notes on how to emulate the quinqui look. But so what? In a country so keen on adopting other people’s nostalgia (viz. Catalan rockabillies, mods and breakdancers…), it’s nice to see people sampling their own kitsch, especially without first passing through the obligatory lens of Almodóvar.

To be fair, the curators try hard not to sugar-coat a gritty reality. But video games and record covers tend to be more eye-catching than photocopies of newspaper articles and treatises on botched urban planning.
In any case, my dictionary says that ‘nostalgia’ comes from Greek words for ‘a return’ and ‘pain or grief’. That sums up a great exhibition that made me want to learn more about the quinqui’s world, which is about all you can ask of a show.


Gabe gave this show top marks, five out of five

Quinquis dels 80: Cinema, Premsa i Carrer
Until September 6th
CCCB
€4.50/€3.40
www.cccb.org