Back to the Eighties: Nostalgia and the “Transition Culture” in El ministerio del tiempo

Abstract

This article addresses the representation of the latter part of the transition to democracy in the Spanish television fantasy drama El ministerio del tiempo (The Ministry of Time, TVE, 2015–). Undoubtedly, one of the most controversial aspects of the series has been its approach to the past in a country such as Spain, where historical representation remains a source of heated intellectual and political debate. In the context of the discussion about historical memory in Spain, I focus on the episodes during the first two seasons in which the series depicts the early years of the 1980s. The representation of this period is tainted by ambiguity over the results of the Transition and is fuelled by nostalgia, as El ministerio del tiempo reconstructs the Transition through non-canonical cultural artefacts in a process in which each new journey to the decade brings more disappointment, which can be related to the critical concept of “la Cultura de la Transición.”