Gen Z challenges nostalgia for Franco-era Spain

Idolizing the 50s, 60s and 70s: Nostalgia or selective amnesia?

A 27-year-old argues on a forum that the decades from the 1950s to the 1970s constituted a hostile society, characterized by 12-to-14-hour workdays including Saturdays, wages handed over entirely to parents, and doctors who smoked during consultations. According to his account, those who idealize this period were mostly born after 1975 and never experienced that version of Spain. The debate erupted when he heard a group of people in their forties—born in the late 70s and early 80s—claiming that "everything was healthier" and that the country's golden age was the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. He notes that none mentioned the 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s.

What really existed in Spain during the 50s, 60s, and 70s according to this narrative

The portrait painted by this participant is far from kind: local caciquismo (political bossism), gangs that would make today's seem amateurish, scarce or non-existent leisure, tobacco and drugs as social norms, structural machismo, and a double standard pitting men against women. To this, he adds working from dawn to dusk—including Saturdays—and handing the entire pay envelope to parents, who sometimes spent it at bingo halls while five siblings shared a bedroom.

He argues that the national music scene of the time consisted of untalented groups imitating a modernity now exclusively attributed to Millennials and Gen Z. In schools, teachers freely vented frustrations on students without anyone protesting. Not even a forum like this would have survived that era, he adds: voicing opinions in a bar could result in a beating or a police record.

Why the 80s, 90s, and 2000s take the crown

The author himself draws the line: things started getting better around 1980–1985. The 80s, 90s, and 2000s are "a different ballgame." During that time, several participants note, people went out Thursday through Sunday, attended festivals and concerts, formed diverse friendships, and enjoyed leisure activities not dependent on screens. A user born in 1971 confirms this: back then, €12 (2,000 pesetas) filled the table with tapas and left money for the rest of the night.

The contrast with previous Spanish society is described as brutal. Cars were dangerous, roads risky, and stable relationships required marriage. Housing in the 70s was, according to one participant, "vertical shantytowns." Leisure consisted of drinks at a bar and card games. Depressing, he concludes.

The economic argument: housing, salary, and pogre

Here the discussion becomes uncomfortable. Several participants argue that a single salary allowed paying for housing and still having fun, that jobs became genuinely permanent, and children played in the streets without antiestéticar. In contrast, they describe the present with shared rooms, impossible rents, and insufficient wages. The recurring conclusion: we live worse than our parents did.

One specific case is recounted. A man born in 1925 into extreme poverty, with eight siblings, being the only one to learn reading and basic math, took early retirement in the 70s at just over fifty years old with about 10 million pesetas of the time, after alternating between farming, livestock, and deep-sea fishing. He built a good house effortlessly. His illiterate brothers also did well, according to this account.

The counterattack: nostalgia as a trap

Not everyone buys this narrative. The most repeated objection: those idealizing the 50s, 60s, and 70s are applying the same filter someone will use in fifty years to claim that 2024 Spain was wonderful. Each generation edits out the bad and amplifies the good. Social hostility, lack of freedoms, and absence of expectations are not compensated by cheap housing.

The myth of zero leisure is also rebutted. Without screens, the street was an amusement park: marbles, bottle caps, scooters, and games where cars passed by and no one fined anyone. Cinema was in Panavision. Music was infinitely better. And doctors of the Seguridad Social (Spanish public health system) were competent and meticulous, according to those who experienced them as children.

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The prediction, with reservations: as long as housing remains out of reach for average salaries and stable employment becomes the exception, nostalgia for past decades will continue to gain ground. Not because those decades were better in every way, but because they solved problems that remain unsolved today. If that changes, the narrative will change. If not, in twenty years, someone will write this exact text about 2024.