Clara Usón at the Paris Review:
Sandra Mozarowsky was never a queen. She was never a king’s girlfriend. She was the king’s lover, though, if you believe the rumors.
As the Franco regime approached its end, its subjects started demanding freedom of expression. Not the whole country, but enough of us to be heard. Our demands for liberty got louder and more insistent, and the regime took them to mean that we wanted to see breasts. We wanted naked women, or half-naked, and so we spent the mid-seventies gaping in awe as our country attained the dubious freedom of a national cinema starring girls who, without fail, opened or removed their tops within seconds of appearing onscreen.
Yes, in Spain, freedom was for breasts. You could spy some liberated bush in a semilegal softcore magazine, too, though never ever a penis. Visible male genitalia would be libertinism, which was anathema. According to the many government ministers and functionaries assigned to disseminate this message, liberty was one thing, libertinism another, and as a nation, it was important for us not to get them confused.
more here.
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