Learning Freedom: Democracy and New Music in Post-Francoist Spain

This research project will analyse the relationships between music and democracy in post-Francoist Spain (1975-1986). The Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975, after nearly 40 years in power. There followed a process aimed towards the creation of a democratic state, an episode which historians have interpreted as a complex and collective learning of freedom that, in a few years, was to change the country thoroughly. My project seeks to provide a ground-breaking study of this period as it played out in the domain of new music – i.e. contemporary classical music. I will examine how musical practices and institutions formed ways of imagining democracy, and how they participated in the wider social struggle to define freedom and equality for the post-Francoist era.