Entre calles y alcobasvida urbana y sexualidad en el Madrid popular de entreguerra

Abstract

One of the many social and cultural conflicts that arose during the interwar period appear due to new forms of sexuality and urban life. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the public debate raised awareness controversary new behaviours and social attitudes that were emerging in big cities. New habits and behaviours were arguably a symptom of the interwar state of crisis, which shook the certainties, rules, and criteria that governed relations between men and women till them. Specifically, relations of affective and sexual nature. The social discourse was fed at the time by many complaints and claims warning of the enormous harm that metropolises such as Madrid were inflicting to its population’s morality and good manners. Multiple newspapers, magazines, and essays supported a highly condemnatory narrative against the capital, which frequently used the adjective "new Babylon" to underline its lewd and corrupting nature of the traditional moral order. Alarmed moralists pointed with disgust to the impudence daily observed in the streets of Madrid. They usually condemned the numerous prostitutes that invaded its alleys and squares, as well as the lewd shows exhibited in its theatres and cinemas. In addition, they disapproved the new "gambling dens" and other "centres of corruption" populating Madrid’s urban landscape. All this, they said, was, in turn, the cause and corollary of a generalised state of moral laxity that had infiltrated not only people's public habits but also, and above all, their private conduct...