1,500 items.

Ajoblanco was one of the main libertarian and countercultural magazines in Spain in the second half of the 1970s, becoming at the same time one of the most influential publications in the Spanish-speaking world during the first two stages of its existence.

The magazine first came out in 1974, spearheaded by Pepe Ribas (Barcelona, 1951), then a law student at the University of Barcelona, who was from a bourgeois background and of a libertarian ideological bent. He managed to gather a heterogeneous group of collaborators around him, made up of, among others, Toni Puig, Fernando Mir, Luis Racionero, Alberto Cardín, Ramón Barnils, Quim Monzó, Nuria Amat, Karmele Marchante and Santiago Soler Amigó.

Ajoblanco was conceived as a project that aspired to oppose the Franco regime, while simultaneously maintaining its independence from the leftist opposition parties. In addition to the praxis of politics, its primary interests were certain social issues that had never been dealt with in Spain until then: the gay rights movement, environmentalism, sustainable urbanism, anti-psychiatry, sexual freedom and collectivism, among others.

The magazine has gone through three stages. The first from its founding in 1974 to 1980, and the second from 1987 to 1999. The third began in 2017 with the release of a 132-page issue without advertising and with the intention of appearing quarterly.

Archivo Lafuente acquired the documentation from the magazine’s first stage (1974-1980) from Pepe Ribas. It is a collection consisting of 1,500 items. In addition to the entirety of the magazine’s issues, its most notable contents include correspondence, photographs, documents revealing how the magazine dealt with censorship, fanzines, other magazines related in some way to Ajoblanco and the original mockups of the issues published.