Almodóvar and la movida in El Ministerio del Tiempo: Queering or Pinkwashing the Spanish Democratic Transition?

This article examines the fictional renderings of Pedro Almódovar and la movida in the Spanish TV series El Ministerio del Tiempo (2015–2020). First, I analyze how El Ministerio champions the democratic transition as a period that set the foundations for a modern pluralistic Spain. Then, I examine how the series incorporates Almodóvar's Laberinto de pasiones (1982) into its story as a means of stressing the vital contribution of the underground scene to the renewal of post-Franco culture. I focus on El Ministerio 's portrayal of drag performances and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, highlighting the restaging of one of Almodóvar's earliest and most daring films, and thus showing how the series adjusts an emblematic example of counterculture to hegemonic accounts of the transition. Ultimately, I argue that El Ministerio assimilates sexual diversity and counterculture into a teleological rereading of Spanish history that celebrates the transition as the ultimate stage of individual freedom and national reconciliation. This article examines the fictional renderings of Pedro Almódovar and la Movida in the Spanish TV series El Ministerio del Tiempo (2015–2020). First, I analyze how El Ministerio draws upon time travel and speculative fiction to champion the democratic transition as a period that set the foundations for a modern pluralistic Spain. Then, I examine how the series incorporates Almodóvar's Laberinto de pasiones (1982) into its story, recreating its narrative and aesthetic cues as a means of stressing the vital contribution of the underground scene to the post-Franco cultural renovation. I particularly focus on El Ministerio 's portrayal of drag performances and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, highlighting that it restages one of Almodóvar's earliest and most daring films through the lens of his later canonization as the quintessential Spanish auteur. In this way, I show that the series adjusts an emblematic example of counterculture to hegemonic accounts of the transition, realigning Laberinto with the goal of institutionalizing democratic culture and consolidating the nowadays much-questioned logic of consensus that guided state cultural policies during the 1980s. Ultimately, I argue that El Ministerio reintegrates sexual diversity and counterculture into a teleological rereading of Spanish history that celebrates the transition as the ultimate stage of individual freedom and national reconciliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]