After an overlay on the black screen, which warns that the narrated events have actually happened, various images of Barcelona follow, accompanied by an off-screen rant about how the wave of youth crime is everyone's problem and responsibility. Finally, after concluding that "the possibilities of redemption for these boys" depend on the arm of the law, but also on the charity of each one of us, the paternalistic sermon ceases and – at once – the action begins.
We see three kids walking through what appears to be a residential neighborhood that could be the streets adjacent to Bonanova. In the background, the frantic rhythm of Paolo Vasile's Tema B (used a couple of years earlier in La polizia interviene: ordine di uccidere! by the Neapolitan Giuseppe Rosati). The boys stop in front of a SEAT 1.430 and, after checking that no one is around, smash the window and open it.
The clear leader of the trio sits behind the wheel and, with skill, hot-wires it. The vehicle starts. That's it, they already have a car to move around the streets and snatch bags. But, after stealing a bag from a woman, they are surprised by the police and a thrilling chase begins where, despite his very young age, the driver, whom we discover is nicknamed el Torete, demonstrates astonishing skill behind the wheel.
By this point, little more than five minutes of footage have passed, but it is not difficult to imagine the audience that attended the premiere of the film, on that Christmas Eve of 1977. Their faces contorted, their eyes wide open, their hands firmly gripping the armrests of the seat. A new subgenre had been born: quinqui cinema.
Indigenous Exploitation
"There was a period, between 1977 and 1985, in that Spain aspiring to the European Economic Community, in which several filmmakers seem to have felt an urgent need to express themselves about their political and social present. Films about street crime are symptoms of the inflammation of the unemployment queue, the growth of street crimes and the suffocating climate of citizen insecurity that the crime pages punctually reflected," reasons Mery Cuesta in the pages of Quinquis dels 80, cinema, prensa i carrer.
"The quinqui genre –he adds– cinematographically exorcises the forms that corresponded to a period of emergence of the image of urban marginality, counterculture, and explicitness in Spain." The word comes from quincallero –an itinerant seller of cheap metal objects, of junk– and had been popularized by Eleuterio Sánchez, el Lute, and Raimundo Medrano, with their escapades in the 60s.
Now, it acquired a new urban meaning, linked to the youth of the marginalized neighborhoods of large cities. The quinquis were no longer the itinerant junk sellers who roamed from town to town, fending off hunger, cold, and prejudice, but rather youngsters from the periphery with a penchant for stealing what was not theirs, robbing cars, mugging people, and, having not much to lose, living dangerously. The perfect breeding ground for developing an ad hoc narrative fueled by the tabloid press, and promoted as an iconic pop subculture of that developing country.
But if the range of the cinematographic subgenre opens with Perros Callejeros (Street Dogs), it is no less true that –thanks to the impact of the filmic lexicons of Italian neorealism and French polar– there were already excellent precedents of juvenile delinquent cinema manufactured in these latitudes. This is the case of the superb Los golfos (The Hooligans), Carlos Saura's first feature film, from 1959; of Juventud a la intemperie (Youth Exposed), by Ignacio F. Iquino, from 1961 and, in a very clear way, of the notable Los atracadores (The Robbers), from 1962. In this adaptation of the great novel by Tomás Salvador, by Francisco Rovira Beleta, a superb Julián Mateos shines, leading a group of juvenile delinquents in their escalation towards increasingly serious crimes. Until, of course, there is no turning back.
Other closer precedents are Una gota de sangre para morir amando (A Drop of Blood to Die Loving) by Eloy de la Iglesia (the Celtiberian version of A Clockwork Orange, with leather-clad droogs wielding sharp whips), La corea (The Korea), by Pedro Olea or Juventud drogada (Drugged Youth), by Pedro Truchado. All these (and other) paths led to quinqui cinema which, however, had the peculiarity of featuring real thugs as protagonists. Kids taken from neighborhoods where no one wants to pass even by chance, some of whom became true stars, intensely bright, though –as we will see– brief.
Considered by Javier Cercas as "one of the worst blots on the Transition," this subgenre "was a cinema accused of being ugly and that displeased both the right and the left; it bothered because it directly appealed to the bad conscience of the urban middle class," explained filmmaker Luis López Carrasco in a report by Luis Martínez for El Mundo. Proof of this is the vitriolic criticism that the Falangist newspaper Arriba dedicated to Perros Callejeros. Pay attention to the bad blood: "Stupid opportunism, feuilleton, secular sermon, terrible and frustrated denunciation, overwhelmingly bad."
The fact is that, after De la Loma's film, other films followed such as Navajeros, El Pico, Colegas, Chocolate, Nunca en horas de clase (our peculiar Saturday Night Fever), Deprisa, deprisa or the very political La patria del rata by several directors such as Eloy de la Iglesia, Saura or Gil Carretero. There were also two sequels to Perros callejeros and, finally, in 1985, Yo, el Vaquilla, which was the story that De la Loma truly intended to tell from the beginning.
How Trompetilla became Torete
To understand the story behind Perros Callejeros, it is necessary to talk about Juan José Moreno Cuenca, alias el Vaquilla. A boy hardened in the Cinco Rosas of Sant Boi, in Campo de la Bota and later in La Mina, who had been committing crimes since he was nine years old. The beloved journalist Xavier Vinader defined him thus: "He was born marked, with no escape. Three older brothers and all three criminals, his father shot dead by the Civil Guard, his mother tried to kill him as a newborn…".
That boy, who in 1977 was sixteen years old, was an archetype of a modern young bandit, son of the outskirts, victim of the selective blindness of a society that avoided looking at the marginalized neighborhoods, which powerfully caught the attention of a José Antonio de la Loma very sensitive to issues of social exclusion. In his youth, he had been a school teacher in the Barrio Chino and author of social novels such as Sin la sonrisa de Dios and Estación de servicio, in the vein of Donde la ciudad cambia su nombre by Paco Candel or Los Otros by Luis Romero.
For Perros Callejeros, "it was inspired by the exploits told to him by a gang of kids from La Mina, whose crimes had already been amplified by the sensationalist press of the time following a tragic episode: after stealing a car in La Verneda, El Vaquilla and his friends ran over a woman repeatedly until killing her before the astonished gaze of her husband, her two children, and other neighbors," explains Amanda Cuesta in the aforementioned Quinquis dels 80.
El Vaquilla himself corroborates this in his memoirs, Hasta la libertad: "De la Loma had been inspired by my adventures to film Perros Callejeros in 1977, which had two more parts, due to the success of the first." But then, why wasn't El Vaquilla himself the protagonist of the films? He explains it to us himself: "The intransigent attitude of the presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, who refused to grant me freedom to work in the first of the series, led De la Loma to invent a Vaquilla named Torete for these three films." For this, he turned to his friend and partner in crime, Ángel Fernández Franco, until then known as El Trompetilla, and who, from then on, would be nicknamed Torete on and off screen.
Curiously, for the second part of the film –Perros callejeros II– and the third –Los últimos golpes de El Torete–, De la Loma was going to introduce the character of El Vaquilla, but instead of resorting to some other kid from the outskirts, he had him played by actor Bernard Seray, blond, blue eyes, perfect model face… no one less similar to the original delinquent than him. Finally, in 1985, the filmmaker was going to direct Yo, el Vaquilla, featuring Juan José Moreno himself and the aforementioned journalist Xavier Vinader in what is, more clearly, a biopic of a quinqui star.
The Barcelona no one wants to look at
Several neighborhoods and points in the Barcelona metropolitan area were natural settings for Perros callejeros. Among these, the old Wad-Ras reformatory, Poble Nou, Bellvitge, Gavà, Castelldefels, and La Mina. In this narrative idealization of contemporary bandits, many of these places paid the cost of stigmatization.
In an article for La Vanguardia, Chom Sánchez narrated the following anecdote: "When, on November 28, 1976, José Antonio de La Loma wanted to film some scenes of Perros Callejeros in the streets of La Mina, many residents were outraged. They sensed that the film was creating an anti-hero model, worthy of imitation by the neighborhood's most fragile youth, lacking any moral reference. The next day, the neighborhood's robustly organized associative movement prevented the filming from continuing in the planned locations. The rest of the footage had to be shot far from the neighborhood due to neighborhood opposition. Later, several young people from La Mina signed a manifesto titled No somos Perros Callejeros," he explains, citing Josep Maria Monferrer and his book Història del barri de la Mina.
Little did the director's redemptive tone matter – very different from Eloy de la Iglesia's and the Madrid approach to the quinqui phenomenon, much rawer – nor his sermons about the need to mentor and rescue from the gutter those boys, children of that poverty and periphery towards whom no one wanted to direct their gaze. The explosive mix of sex, car chases, and violence; the challenge that those kids with long hair, tight Lois jackets, bell-bottom pants, fashionable Adidas sneakers, and few scruples posed to authority – and to life – was too attractive for the wrong reasons. Everyone wanted to look at those streets, but out of morbid curiosity.
The film immediately became one of the most-watched Spanish films with over 1,800,000 viewers. And, more importantly, it set a precedent. Concha Gómez García explains this in an article for Historia y comunicación social, regarding the arrest, shortly after the film's premiere, of the famous juvenile delinquent José Joaquín Sánchez Frutos, alias el Jaro, an iconic Madrid quinqui: "El Jaro confessed to the police that he had changed from robbery to theft 'after seeing the recently released film Perros Callejeros' and 'realizing that this way of acting was more effective and less risky.' From this moment on, this delinquent gained great notoriety due to his continuous presence in the Madrid press."
One of the elements that most hooked thousands of viewers and turned the Perros Callejeros films into video club evergreens, were the thrilling action scenes and car chases. Of a quality never before seen in cinema made here. This was possible thanks to the specialist Rémy Julienne, who coordinated these scenes, although, in the pages of Interviú, Xavier Vinader doubted that the protagonists had much to envy the Frenchman, given their extensive career stealing cars and fleeing at full speed from police chases.
By the way, as a curious anecdote, on one occasion Vaquilla himself was going to be arrested after going to the cinema to see one of the films. "I left halfway through the movie because I was very blind and I took a car, and I left and they caught me," he explained in August 1979.
The tragic story of Torete and his generation
And, all this, what is Perros Callejeros about? Well, it's about Torete and his friends who get into trouble, who go in and out of reformatories, who steal cars and commit robberies. Who sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of crime. Who oscillate between the cruel absence of scruples and the puerile sentimentality of adolescence. Between recklessness, swagger and silly laughter. Children who grew up too soon and who forge a future made of cells, police abuse and absurd deaths. Then, Torete falls in love with Isabel (Nadia Windel), niece of the fearsome Esquinao (Frank Braña), and gets her pregnant. And there begins a flight forward based on armed robberies, while the policeman Manolo (Víctor Petit) tries to save the unsalvageable.
All of this, it must be said, narrated with a reasonable cinematic pulse. "De la Loma was a disciple of Ignacio F. Iquino, a very prolific filmmaker who did everything in cinema, even when S cinema went a little over the line. De la Loma was an author who adapted to the fashion of the moment, from neorealist melodrama to almost television serials, spicy comedy or action cinema. He was an expert in making sudden turns from one film to another," explained Javier Ikaz, author of Goma 2, el cine explosivo de José Antonio de la Loma, interviewed by Jesús Jiménez.
With a filmography totaling some thirty titles, the filmmaker is remembered above all for his "quinqui" films. Perhaps, from a cinematographic point of view, and despite the often insufferable paternalistic whiff, the best is the second installment of Perros callejeros (Street Dogs). It's not that it's a great film – none of the "quinqui" subgenre are – but it is where there is more budget, good action scenes, and a soundtrack that no longer relies on Italian library music, but features Los Chunguitos performing an electric repertoire of rumba with funk vibes like Un día cualquiera (Any Given Day) or Como yegua brava (Like a Wild Mare) (with an annexed scene of Torete demonstrating his alpha male skills).
Glory was, in any case, ephemeral for the stars of "quinqui" cinema. Ángel Fernández Franco, el Torete, would die in 1991, at the age of 31. Juan José Moreno Cuenca, el Vaquilla, would follow later, in 2003, at 42 years old. In between, José Luis Fernández Eguía, el Pirri; José Luis Manzano, Basilio Fernández Franco (Torete's brother); Miguel Hugal Cuenca, el Carica (Vaquilla's stepbrother) and a long etcetera, fell like prematurely ripened fruits. Young and by no means beautiful corpses.
They were the faces without a future of a subgenre very much our own and practically impossible to export (although in some countries, like Mexico, "quinqui" cinema enjoyed great acceptance). Children of a difficult time; of a country in crisis, eager to become European, but where unemployment, poverty, and lack of education continued to anchor the less favored neighborhoods to the third world. Dead ends lacking light and future, from which to escape often meant doing so feet first.