Desobediencia Responsable, Lorenzo (Quique) Company y la Ruta del Bacalao

Abstract

The Ruta del Bacalao, a cultural movement widely analyzed from the perspective of re-signification and the desire to belong to the hierarchical status imposed by normative cultural frameworks, serves as the starting point for our reflection. This approach seeks to go beyond conventional interpretations, offering a perspective that challenges these dominant narratives. We aim to illustrate how this process of mutation and adaptation—from counterculture to normative culture—was also marked by dynamics of inequality, extractivism, and self-indulgence.

The underground scene of the time represented a unique opportunity to open spaces for new voices and connect with the essential purpose of culture, in the words of Even-Zohar, as “creators of images of life” (Even-Zohar, 2007, p. 57); that is, to generate ideas and narratives that offered alternative options within society. To explore this trajectory and its fractures, we will highlight the figure of Quique (Lorenzo) Company, a total designer and, at the same time, an indefinable figure who occupied the most humid and complex spaces of the already murky underground, as well as the official narrative of the Ruta del Bacalao.

The responsible disobedience exercised by Quique (Lorenzo) Company reminds us of the sensitivity and complexity required to build the body of culture and, ultimately, of design.