Mari Chordà is an artist and socio-cultural feminist activist. In the 1960s she was a pioneer of the visual expression of feminine sexuality, and co-founder of both the feminist LaSal Bar/Library space, in Barcelona’s El Raval neighbourhood, a place of cultural exchange for many women from 1978 to 1990, and the publishing house laSal ediciones de las mujeres (laSal Women’s Publishing). In 2015, London’s Tate Modern chose two of her works, The Great Vagina (1966) and Coitus Pop (1968), for the collective show The World Goes Pop. Some of her pieces are also part of the Museo Reina Sofía Collection. She has also published poetry books, including Cuaderno del cuerpo y del agua (1978).
Elsa Plaza is an illustrator, writer and professor of Art History at the University of Barcelona. She has been part of numerous research groups working on strands of feminist theory and is the author of an array of articles and essays on aesthetics, art theory, memory, biological temporality and women, published in Revista d’Art, Matèria, Histeria, Body-Art and Duoda, among other specialist journals. Her writing most notably includes the novel El cielo bajo los pies (Marlow, 2009), about Enriqueta Martí, accused of multiple murders and trading children in Barcelona at the turn of the twentieth century.
Emilio Sola holds a PhD in History from the Complutense University of Madrid and is a professor at the University of Alcalá de Henares. He is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of Spanish youth and literary counterculture by way of markedly libertarian ludic-cultural initiatives, such as the La Vaquería bar in Madrid and the La Banda de Moebius publishing house, with which he published his poetry collection La soledad, los viajes, el mar, la amnistía (1976), and other works. He is also the author of some of the best documented books on the history of the Mediterranean and relations with Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Berta del Río. Cultural researcher, documentalist and journalist. She studied PhD at Princeton University, with a thesis on theatrical forms and dissidence in the Spanish Transition (1968-1992). At the same time, she coordinates the project Voces y archivos del teatro independiente valenciano (Voices and Archives of Independent Valencian Theatre, 1970–1978) at the Valencia CulturArts Centre of Theatre Documentation. In 2018 she co-directed the documentary Com una família: cent anys de música I autogestió al Puig. She has published in academic journals such as Ínsula y Kamchatka, as well as in generalist media such as Público, Europa Press, La Directa and La Marea.
Esteban Pujals is a poet, translator and professor of English Literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He stands out for his role in activating poetry in the 1970s, and is the author the poetry books Blanco nuclear (Diputación de Málaga, 1986), Juegos de artificio (Diputación de Málaga, 1987) and La lengua radical. Antología de la poesía estadounidense contemporánea (Gramma, 1992). Furthermore, he has written articles in magazines and books on the relationship between poetry and the visual arts, and has translated T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (1990) and Lyn Hejinian’s My Life (2011), among other works.
Llorenç Soler is a film director and TV producer specialised in the field of documentary. His filmography primarily focuses on social issues, and includes Gitanos sin romancero (1976), Francesc Boix, un fotógrafo en el infierno (2000) and Del roig al blau (2005). He is the author of different books on film and TV theories and techniques, for instance La televisión, una metodología para su aprendizaje (Gustavo Gili, 1988) and La realización de documentales y reportajes para televisión (CIMS, 1998), and works as a teacher, running courses and giving seminars, primarily on documentary.
Anna Turbau is a photojournalist who specialises in social issues. The photographs she took of Barcelona’s Chinatown in 1975 brought her into contact with the marginalised city hidden by Francoism and was the trigger that saw her devote her work to photography. In 1976, she moved to Galicia to document the social struggles of the Galician people, and the documentary La mirada de Anna (, 2009), by Llorenç Soler, compiles, through her photos, memories and testimonies – an unofficial version of the Transition in Galicia.
Gonzalo García Pelayo is a film-maker, music producer, radio personality, TV presenter and professional gambler. His filmography includes Manuela (1976), Vivir en Sevilla (1978), Intercambio de parejas frente al mar (1978), Corridas de alegría (1982), Niñas (2014) and Todo es de color (2015); and the triptych Sobre la marcha, Niñas 2 and Mujeres heridas, shot simultaneously in 2016 and streamed on the internet. In 2014, the National Gallery of Jeu de Paume in Paris devoted a three-week series to his work, entitled: VIV(R)E LA VIE! Symphonie underground. Le cinéma de Gonzalo García Pelayo.
Alberto Berzosa is a researcher, essayist, curator and teacher. His work focuses on the relationship between image and politics, with a sharp focus on the pre- and post-Transition context. His publications include Cámara en mano contra el franquismo. De Cataluña a Europa, 1968-1982 (Al Margen, 2009) and Homoherejías fílmicas: Cine homosexual subversivo en España en los años setenta y ochenta (Brumaria, 2014). He curated the exhibition Madrid activismos (1968-1982) and is a member of the research group Cruising the 1970s-CRUSEV.
El Cubri is the artistic name of a comic artist’s collective made up of draughtsmen Pedro Arjona and Saturio Alonso and scriptwriter Felipe Hernández Cava. Among their most political and social works are Luis Candelas, Sombras, El que Parte y Reparte se Queda con la Parte, Francografías and Tal como éramos.
Ana Penyas is a graphic illustrator who holds a diploma in Industrial Design and a degree in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. In 2016, she won the VII Catálogo Iberoamericano Ilustra Award and, in 2018, the Fnac-Salamandra Graphic International Graphic Novel Award, enabling her to publish her first graphic novel Estamos todas bien (We Are All Good), which reclaims the historical memory of the Spanish Transition from a feminist perspective. The novel won Spain’s National Comic Award in 2018.
César Lorenzo Rubio holds a PhD in History from the University of Barcelona. His main subject of research focuses on social movements in the penal sphere. He is the author of Cárceles en llamas. El movimiento de presos sociales en la Transición (Virus Editorial, 2013), and collaborated on the work El siglo de los castigos. Prisión y formas carcelarias en la España del siglo XX (Anthropos, 2013).
Rafael Huertas holds a degree in Medicine from the Complutense University of Madrid, has an honorary doctorate from the University of Buenos Aires, and is a professor of Research at CSIC. He is the author of Otra historia para otra psiquiatría (Xoroi Edicions, 2017), among other works, and has coordinated a number of collective books, such as Psiquiatría y antipsiquiatría en el segundo franquismo y la Transición and Políticas de salud mental y cambio social en América Latina (Catarata, 2017). Moreover, he has served as director of the Department of History of Science at CSIC’s History Institute and been a member on the Executive Board of the European Association for the History of Psychiatry.
Lulú Martorell is a producer and screenwriter. She has worked in a wide array of media, both audiovisual and written, and has made a number of documentaries, for instance Pobres, pobres, que els donguin pel cul (2007), directed with Albert Pla, on the poet Pepe Sales (1954–1994); or the more recent 30 años positivos (2018), on the history of the mural that pop artist Keith Haring painted in Barcelona’s El Raval in 1989, the year before he died of AIDS.
David Cortés Santamarta is an art historian. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the work of Víctor Mira, and in the Museo Reina Sofía he has organised Samuel Beckett. Work for Cinema and Television (2006), With and Against Cinema. Around May’68 (2008) and The Image of Insurgence. Anonymous and Collective Cinema from May ‘68 (2018). Furthermore, he has edited the books George Benjamin (OCNE, 2005) and Sofia Gubaidulina (OCNE, 2009), and his essays have featured in the collective books Hans Werner Henze. Komponist der Gegenwart (Henschel, 2006), Henze. Phaedra. Ein Werkbuch (Wagenbach, 2007) and Música y cine (OCNE, 2010).
Víctor Lenore is a music journalist. He is the author of Indies, hipsters y gafapastas. Crónica de una dominación cultural (Capitán Swing, 2014) and Espectros de la movida: por qué odiar los años 80 (Akal, 2018) and wrote about music in the collective book CT o la Cultura de la Transición. Crítica a 35 años de cultura española (2012). He has also worked as a screenwriter on Mapa Sonoro (La2) and has contributed to El Confidencial, El País, La Razón, Rolling Stone, Playground, Minerva and Ladinamo, and other publications.
Ramsés Gallego-El Coleta is a musician who produces his work, releases his own records and makes his own music videos. He is regarded as one of the biggest names in the new wave of underground Spanish rap and his album, M.O.vida madrileña (2015), is a critique of the most broadly referred to and institutionalised part of the movement, and re-writes neighbourhood life and popular and quinqui (delinquency) culture that marked the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in Spain. He is also the protagonist of Quinqui Stars (2018), a film directed by Juan Vicente Córdoba.
