Throughout human history, very rarely have the masses rallied behind a movement that aims at total cultural upheaval. The human societal scene generally develops at a crawl making it difficult for people to digest radical reforms. As a consequence, ideas that push for sudden change instead of a gradual one often get marked as “counterculture”.

That is, of course, until they become the norm.

The country of Spain was under the rule of a gentleman named Francisco Franco—a military dictator—between 1939 to 1975, an interval large enough for historians to call it a long-ass time. During this period, the cultural and economic identity of the country was seemingly lost, as all of the country’s value was being funneled into the running (read: fattening) of its military. So when the man himself died (peacefully, aged 82 and in a medical coma; people like him don’t always have a bad ending) and the country found itself liberated, it did not quite know what to really do with itself from that point onwards.

Gradually, however, the Spaniards found rationality in Democracy. They accepted its ideals, and shifted their country to a liberal economic model. Things started improving.

The same, however, could not be said of its culture. Under Franco’s absurd regime (filled with surreal concepts such as rules for female sexual conduct both in and out of the bedroom) there had been a wealth of odd ideas governing the country socially. That is, of course, until a couple of people from Madrid started burning the right kind of trees.

At about the same time as the democratic transition, a few gentlemen from the city of Madrid decided to start having fun. To that end, they unofficially sanctioned the use of recreational drugs (to a point where law enforcement found itself helpless). They made government-chortling a hobby, pushed art, and perhaps most importantly, embraced—if not formed—their identity.

While at the time, all these ideas of a radical shift in cultural norms seemed abrupt at best, they were important. Their existence serves as the primary evidential argument for why counterculture, while hard to appreciate during its time, is necessary.

In a strange sense, the counterculture movement—now dubbed La Movida Madrilena or ‘The Madrid Scene’—remained counterculture only for so long until it became part of the Spanish identity.