'[Wheeler's] book is a model of how to write cultural history in its refusal to put things into tidy boxes. In particular, it demonstrates how attention to popular culture allows the historian to prise out the complexity of cultural processes.'Jo Labanyi, Hispanic Research Journal'[A] fascinating, forensic analysis of Spanish culture and politics during the transition from dictatorship to democracy.'Jim Lawley, La Revista'Wheeler has done a superb job in interpreting the complex process of the Spanish transition through the mirror of its cultural life, while also tackling class and gender issues.'Morning Star‘The years of Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy could hardly have been more tumultuous, with terrorism, military subversion and political chicanery in abundance. Duncan Wheeler’s fascinating, utterly original and endlessly entertaining book is one of the best introductions imaginable to a story as murky as it is uplifting.’Sir Paul Preston, Director of Cañada Blanch Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science‘Studies of 1960s, '70s, and '80s Spain usually focus on its entrenched dictatorship and compromise-ridden transition to democracy and rarely invoke the "swinging 60s", the "me decade" or the "decade of greed". Yet there was in Spain no shortage of swinging, egotism or getting rich in the streets and homes, in the bullfighting arenas and on the soccer fields, on the popular press' pages and the screens of increasingly affordable TV sets. In Following Franco, Duncan Wheeler takes the reader on a fun-driven journey through the media- and gossip-scapes of these transformative years. In this fascinating book, he leaves no cultural icon unturned and his trove of facts, large and small, crafts a picture of a country's culture that was, after all, quite similar to that of its neighbours.’Eugenia Afinoguénova, Professor of Spanish Language and Cultural History, Marquette University‘Duncan Wheeler's excellent book offers a thorough study of post-Francoist Spain's cultural logics, from mass media to public policies, paying critical attention to celebrities as well as to art museums. It represents a savvy and well-researched panoramic account of a fascinating time.’Germán Labrador Méndez, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Princeton University‘Following Franco takes the reader on an exciting journey through Spanish culture and politics that reaches back to Francoism and beyond: from the culture of the bull and bullfighters to the symbolic significance of Guernica, from Almodóvar to the Movida, from Olympic Barcelona to the centrifugal movements of Catalonia and the Basque Country, from the uses of censorship to the social role of television and the examples of musical counterculture. Duncan Wheeler gives an enriching and comprehensive account that allows us to understand the idiosyncrasies of contemporary Spain.’Manuel Palacio, Professor of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, University Carlos III of Madrid
