In the eighties and nineties of the last century, dissident youth gathered in the Plaça del Pi, the Square of the Pine, in the Gothic center of Barcelona. As an alternative to the mentality of the Franco regime that still pervaded Spanish society, they imagined and identified with the Makokis, recently escaped trom the insane asylum - like their Russian dissident hero - to battle the creeps in power. They translated their imaginary exploits in comics that captured the minds of the post-Franco urban generation. Till one day something terrible happened, something that made the Makokis fall out of their imaginary cloud right into something much more serious than their daily phantasy skirmishes with the vested orders. Not only had they landed in the middle of the war on drugs, but they were being besieged by Uncle Sam, with the help of none other than their trusted man, Felipe Gonzalez, socialist prime-minister of Spain. Now it was no longer a time for comics, but for action.
Thus was born 'la movida cannabica', the move that set off the fight for the relegalization of cannabis in Spain and would lead to a first breach of the prohibition legislation, known as "la brecha catalana".. |
