My Own Private Movida

Commissioned as part of a collection to celebrate La Movida, the cultural awakening that burst onto the scene in 1980s Madrid, this warm, comic, nostalgic essay recalls a teenage girl’s experiences of growing up in a convent school in the Spanish capital.  Shielded by the fences of their school and cared for by some surprisingly modern nuns, the then-adolescent writer describes the frisson of excitement of knowing that a counter-cultural movement was raging close by at the city’s pulsating heart.

When I was 16, something revolutionary happened amongst the reverend sisters:  they decided to take off their wimples…

My Own Private Movida appears in Dark Habits, a collection of artists’ responses to La Movida published in 2017 by Cornerhouse Publications.  It was compiled as an accompanying anthology to an exhibition on La Movida staged at Manchester’s HOME MCR, home of the annual Viva! festival where in 2016 I translated two plays by leading Cuban playwright Abel González Melo:  Weathered and Chamaco.

Dark Habits was not without controversy:  one printer refused to print the anthology, judging it to be ‘obscene’.  Those who wish to judge for themselves can purchase the anthology here.

Contact me for more details. 

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