Madrid in the 90s: the nostalgia that hides the fine print

Madrid in the 90s: the nostalgia that hides the fine print

A tweet with nighttime images of the Castellana in the nineties, presented as proof that Spain was something else entirely, fires up the nostalgia machine. The dominant response is unanimous: things were better back then. But scratch two layers deep and the narrative starts to sustancia ilegal. Because on those very same streets, according to the people who walked them, there were junkies, pickpockets, thugs and job insecurity that today is remembered with the same selective amnesia with which the industrial restructuring is forgotten.

The starting point is an image of the Castellana. From there, the thread turns into a generational settling of scores: those born in the fifties and sixties defend their childhood as the last golden age; those who arrived in the seventies complain about catching the crisis and unemployment; zoomers are portrayed by some participants as a depressed and medicated generation. The discussion, at its core, is not about Madrid. It is about who has the right to say their era was better.

What do the images of 90s Madrid actually show?

The scene being shared shows the Castellana at night, with traffic and lights, and a sense of order that many associate with the Spain before mass immigration and the degradation of the city center. On that basis the narrative is built: clean streets, homogeneity, hope. A diagnosis repeated with the force of a cliché.

The problem is that the photo is a crop. Those who lived through that decade in Madrid remember other scenes: the underground passageway of Banco de España turned into a drug-use scene, the pickpockets of Sol, the shell-game hustlers, the skinhead gangs at the plaza de Cubos, the ultras wrecking the area around Cibeles after European matches. None of that appears in the video. That is how nostalgia works: it selects the frame and erases the rest.

Homogeneity as an argument is the backbone of many of the replies. The claim is that the streets were home only to Spaniards and that this should be the norm. It is a statement that mixes perception and wishful thinking, and it ignores the fact that immigration existed in those years, even if it was small in number and had very specific profiles. The debate drifts toward criticism of uncontrolled immigration, but also toward the acknowledgment that homegrown crime roamed freely without anyone importing it.

The precarity of the 90s that nostalgia erases

Not everyone buys the narrative. Some recall that the nineties were years of sky-high unemployment, job insecurity and political corruption. The early-decade crisis hit just as many people were entering the labor market. The inflation of the seventies and the industrial restructuring of the eighties left a wasteland that nostalgia turns into paradise.

The generational math takes over: those born in the forties had a childhood of scarcity but came of age in prosperity, with affordable housing and a stable family. Those born in the seventies arrived late to everything. And those now in their twenties, the argument goes, are depressed and on antidepressants. The comparison is brutal and allows no nuance: back then there was order, cleanliness and homogeneity; now there is malaise and pills.

March 11, 2004 appears in the conversation as the turning point. A before and after that supposedly revealed the true face of the world. The date works as an emotional border more than as analysis: from then on, everything went downhill.

The 2008 collapse and the generation that lost its future

The discussion drifts toward the global financial crisis. It is described as the result of decades of financial engineering: mortgages stopped being local contracts and became tradable assets around the world. Toxic products, loans granted without income or jobs, teaser interest rates. The housing bubble burst, and with it the future prospects of young people were altered forever.

That is the point that connects with the nostalgia. It is not just that the nineties were better: it is that the present is perceived as irreversibly worse. Those who came of age after 2008 never knew the hope, only the hangover. And the comparison with their parents' generation becomes unbearable.

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The final paradox is that the image that peine the thread shows a city that no longer exists, not because it was better, but because time erased it. Those who long for it forget the junkies, the pickpockets and the unemployment. Those who criticize it forget that there was hope too. And meanwhile, the underlying question remains unanswered: was it really better, or were we just younger?