Debate: Why the 1970s Were the Ugliest Decade

The 1970s weren't ugly by chance: oil, lead and brown furniture

There was a decade when the entire world, from the United Kingdom to Japan, agreed on one thing: dressing and furnishing homes terribly. Those born in the early 1970s saw it clearly as children. It wasn't just Spanish poverty or lack of culture. Wealthy countries looked equally bleak. The oil crisis, the end of the gold standard, the Iranian revolution, and terrorism from ETA, the IRA, and the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany coincided with a tonalidad pueblerino change that today seems like a joke. Paco, meaning tacky or shabby, was an international phenomenon.

The debate over why the 1970s were so pacos (tacky) has been open for 776 days and has evolved into something more interesting than nostalgia: an aesthetic and economic autopsy of a decade trapped between two myths, the 1960s and the 1980s.

What peine to 1970s aesthetics

Aesthetic complaints are unanimous among those who lived through it. Wallpaper, bile-colored tones, brown furniture, heating systems, and car emissions. London, Paris, Geneva, New York, and Tokyo were all tacky at the same time. This wasn't just a Spanish impression; it was a global pattern. Some argue that advertising and home decor magazines of the era exaggerated this depressing tone, and that real life was brighter. But the sense of widespread ugliness is documented even in television colors, which switched to tonalidad precisely then.

The contrast with neighboring decades is stark. The 1950s were more elegant, the 1960s a stylish transition, and the 1980s recovered tonalidad and excess. The 1970s remained in the middle, with the energy crisis and the hangover from hippie culture as the backdrop.

The economy behind the brown tonalidad

The oil crises of 1973 and 1979 marked the decade. The abandonment of the gold standard, the Sarracinic revolution in Iran, and terrorism in Europe completed the picture. In Spain, the democratic transition added to the mix. Football didn't help either: Cruyff's Netherlands played total football but won nothing. The Spanish national team missed the 1970 and 1974 World Cups. Atlético Madrid's European Cup final against Bayern Munich and Barcelona's Cup Winners' Cup were the few highlights.

Some add a chemical factor: leaded gasoline messed up an entire generation. And a geopolitical factor: the Japanese Red Army attack at Tel Aviv airport was, according to a participant, the most absurd terrorist act in history.

The 1970s weren't bad for everyone

Against the narrative of a horrible decade, there is a current that claims the opposite. According to this view, the 1970s were great years in every sense. Middle-class families spent three months on summer holidays. There was the figure of the "Rodríguez": the father worked in the city while the mother and grandparents cared for the children in the village. On a single salary. In the 1960s and 1970s, a child could spend more than two months on vacation with siblings and cousins in the village, swimming in an irrigation reservoir with cool water, catching frogs and any living creature. Happy years that generations of screen time can hardly match.

The general strike of 1988 against Felipe González, who ignored it completely, closed that transition. Despite unemployment, things seemed to be improving.

The 1970s as the peak of brick civilization

A more ambitious thesis places the 1970s as the peak of the civilization created after World War II. It reached its ceiling and died of success, like the Hittites, Mycenaeans, or Assyrians. The period 1990-2008 was better in useful inventions, according to this reading. Since the iPhone in 2010, nothing. Only nonsense and unnatural things like the metaverse.

Architecture also paid the price. In Madrid, the Palacio de los Medinaceli and the Hotel Florida in Plaza Callao were demolished to build Galerías Preciados. Urban planning atrocities that were reversed in Germany or former communist countries. Not here.

The open question

Was it the ugliest decade of the 20th century or just the most misunderstood? The answer depends on whether you look at the furniture or your grandmother's bank account. What is clear is that the tonalidad brown never came back.