Queer Memory in Contemporary Spanish Streaming Series: Paquita Salas, Veneno and Maricón Perdido

This chapter examines audio-visual forms of queer memory work through the representation of LGBTQ+ and non-normative subjectivities in contemporary Spanish streaming series. Creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (‘Los Javis’) centre LGBTQ+ representation and non-normative identities in their series Paquita Salas (2016-2019) and Veneno (2020). Similarly, writer and comedian Bob Pop creates in the auto-fictional series Maricón Perdido (2021) a retrospective narrative representing queer childhood and adolescence, non-normative bodies and disability, and casting a look back at the recent past to reassess the changes in societal values and representations in the twenty-first century. Via the wide-reaching streaming television medium, queer representations of the past speak to the important role of popular cultural productions as agents of mediation, visibility and social change. By reconstructing and reflecting on people and events otherwise marginalized or excluded from hegemonic memory narratives, audio-visual media can perform crucial forms of transgenerational memory (re)articulation and community creation.