This text is an attempt to review some academic work on youth cultures carried out in Spain since the transition to democracy (although some earlier work related to the subject, stemming from the late Franco period, is also brought up). The nearly 200 contributions analyzed (books, papers, theses, unpublished reports and journal texts) were grouped into different academic areas such as criminology, sociology, psychology, communication or anthropology, and theoretical trends ranging from "edifying" ecclesiastic post-war literature to the Birmingham school, to post-subcultural studies. The works are classified into seven major periods marked by different youth styles which act as distorting mirrors of social and cultural changes that are taking place: the late Franco times (golfos and jipis), the transition to democracy (punkis and progres), the post-transition (pijos and makineros), the 1990s (okupas and pelaos), the beginning of century (fiesteros and alternativos), the Latin kings and ñetas (2005̶ 2010) and finally, in the present, the ninis and indignados.