Trans-Folk as Cultural Resistance and Identity Reconstruction in Plurinational Spain

This article explores Iberian trans-folk, a recent musical phenomenon that revives traditional music through underground and urban aesthetic codes, primarily punk and rave. Based on a corpus of musical collectives active in 2022, the research applies Stratum Theory (Hartmann and Copland) to conduct a six-level semiotic analysis: timbre, rhythm, melody, harmony, lyrics, and audiovisual elements. The results reveal that these groups, such as Califato 3/4, Chill Mafia, and Palmer, reinterpret Iberian periphery identities by blending traditional roots with contemporary expressions and critical values. The study concludes that Iberian trans-folk represents a form of cultural revaluation and resistance against music industry absorption, promoting local identities in a context of global crisis. The prototypical bands of the phenomenon we have studied are Califato 3/4, Rodrigo Cuevas, Chill Mafia, Boyanka Kostova, Baiuca and Palmer.