Like several of his contemporaries in the early 1980s, the director Eloy de la Iglesia turned his attention to the theme of juvenile delinquency. Set on the outskirts of the city, his films Navajeros/Knifers (1980), Colegas/Pals (1982), El pico/Overdose (1983), El pico II/Overdose II (1984) and La estanquera de Vallecas/Hostages in the Barrio (1987) pivot on themes of drug taking and urban alienation, through a particular emphasis on the naked male body. Indeed, Eloy de la Iglesia's particular evocation of the delinquency film – or cine quinqui, as these delinquent films have come to be known – was most characterised by his erotic fascination with the fragile beauty of male teenagers. This was most significantly played out in the depiction of José Luis Manzano, a non-professional actor who was cast as protagonist in all five films, and who also allegedly became the lover of the director. While long derided by critics, cine quinqui has acquired something of a cult status in recent years, and de la Iglesia's films are no exception. Younger audiences have nostalgically resurrected the films for their subcultural kudos and retro-aesthetics, while recent cultural production in Spain – as attested most notably by the television programme Ochéntame otra vez (‘Take me back to the 1980s’) produced by RTVE, a recent exhibition entitled ‘Quinquis de los 80. Cine, prensa, calle’ (‘Quinquis in the 1980s: Cinema, Press, Street’), and Javier Cercas’ recent novel Las leyes de la frontera/Outlaws (2012) – has sought to revindicate the quinqui subculture as a long-forgotten but integral narrative of the transition to democracy.

With his chiselled features and distinctive curly locks, José Luis Manzano was the most striking cover boy for the quinqui subculture, frequently appearing in the pages of weekly magazines such as Fotogramas and Interviú, and even once on the cover of Party, Spain's first gay magazine (see Party 1984). While de la Iglesia's films similarly displayed a visual fascination with Manzano, it is not so much the image as the texture of his body that I wish to explore in this chapter. Youthful and smooth, taut yet fragile – the surface of Manzano's skin emerges as a crucial motif in his quinqui films, one that brings into play a more tactile and sensory engagement with cinema.