November 20th 1975 – the death of Francisco Franco Bahamonde – Caudillo of Spain, was announced.
It wasn’t a surprise – the announcement had been rumoured to be imminent for months, but this time it was for real.
And so began the process of what came to be known as The Transition – the transition from a dictatorship to a democracy that became so, so much more.
Spain transitioned at just about every level. Nothing had to stay the same. Everything was handed a kind of “Get Out of Jail FREE” card and allowed – no…. expected, to redefine itself.
Social mores around marriage, relationships and – of course – sex transitioned.
Music transitioned.
Culture transitioned.
The Trade Unions transitioned.
Women went to the beach topless without the fear of a caped Guardia Civil arresting them.
Discotheques and night clubs appeared like mushrooms in a heavy dew and the country felt it was free to do anything it wanted without any limits.
For anyone coming to Spain during the transition the “freedom” was palpable.
Hard core porn magazines were on display for sale in newsagents (and gas stations) without any consideration for children or anyone who might be offended.
People were smoking joints in public without any real fear of the authorities.
People rode motorcycles around barefoot, in nothing but a pair of shorts and without a helmet – helmets didn’t become compulsory in Spain until 2004 – fully 31 years after they had become so in the UK.
And who do you think grabbed this new found freedom with an insatiable hunger and both hands?
The youth.
Until then, outside the cities at least, Spain didn’t really have teenagers. Children grew up quickly and either studied or went to work.
Suddenly, however, they too enjoyed an unexpected freedom – to just be a young person. Supported by parents, but with adult privileges.
I have a fascination with this generation – I call them the Children of the Transition – an echo of the Marc Bolan song of my own youth – Children of the Revolution.
But you won’t fool the children of the revolution
No, you won’t fool the children of the revolution, no no no”
And the Children of the Transition felt that they, too, were somehow in total control of their own destiny.
How wrong they were.
Speaking to friends who were teenagers in 1975 the stories are all too similar.
Like all teenagers, they hung around in loose groups of friends – the pandilla (the endearing word for a group of close friends – not a gang as such, just a loose collection of kids from an area who would hang out together); drinking, smoking (every Spanish teenager smoked in the 70’s, Marlboro, Winston and Chesters if you had some money, Fortuna if you had less and Ducados if you had none… and hash – lots and lots of hash), riding around on the back of a friend’s Derbi motorcycle, and staying out until dawn as often as possible.
As the power of the Church and parental control over adolescents diminished, so the rate of teenage pregnancies hit a sharp peak in 1977.
It was, literally, sex and drugs and bad rock and roll (more on that in another post).
But when you speak to them today you begin to realise just how many of that generation managed to die before they got old.
Initially, it was mainly traffic accidents.
That makes sense. If you’re riding a crappy 49cc moped around at full throttle without a helmet – or a shirt – an accident is more likely to be fatal. And if you’re driving in a state of severe intoxication in a Renault 5 with dodgy brakes, 7 of you in the car…. well, your chances of survival are severely impaired.
It always seemed to be a group of them crammed into a car designed to fit half of them. It always seemed to be on the way back from somewhere – a party or a feria in the neighbouring town. It always seemed to be at 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning. They always seemed so innocent. Like all teenagers, they had considered themselves to be indestructible – these things never happened to them. Until they did.
Once traffic accidents had taken their toll it was the turn of drugs. Through the 80’s they progressed from hash to amphetamines, cocaine and eventually heroin.
Hash and amphetamines are unlikely to kill you – but add in the Renault 5 or the now more powerful Japanese motorcycles and you double their chances. Cocaine too.
But heroin will kill you all on its own. And if it didn’t, in the late 80’s and early 90’s it mustered some help from HIV and ran the roll call again.
Nowhere was this more common than in the Basque Country. Conspiracy theories abound about this being part of a plan to subdue the ETA heartlands, but it’s more likely just a sad statistic. Not even politicians could have been that cruel.
Speak to anyone in their 70’s in Spain and they will speak fondly about their “pandilla” and the ones they lost along the way.
And it’s never just one or even two. A group of six or seven friends will have lost three or four. Or maybe two died and two survived – but are living a life destroyed by drug use or alcoholism.
There is much fuss made about the 58,220 US casualties in the Vietnam War. As Spain transitioned, it lost many more of a similar generation than the US. Of course, Spain didn’t send these children to war. They didn’t need to. They simply gave them more freedom than they could ever have been expected to handle at such a delicate age.
No-one ever seems to speak about them, but their pandilla remembers and misses them every day – those Children of the Transition.
