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The newspaper ABC takes a look at the phenomenon, based on figures taken from the latest official survey conducted by Spain's Instituto Nacional de Consumo (you can translate that for yourself).

In the last survey conducted by the economic agency Instituto Nacional de Consumo (INC), in 1998, clothes and footwear still ranked high on the shopping list of Spain's 14 to 29 year-olds. Latest figures, however, appear to show that new trends are emerging. Sociologists explain that this is a generation which has grown up with technology and that it is therefore logical that electronic devices should occupy an ever more prominent role in their priorities.

"Young people 'squander' their money much more these days on mobile telephones than they do on fashion, which means the monthly family spending has gone up immensely", says the consumer organisation Facua, adsding that: "They don't have a real concept of saving and spend a lot of money on downloading ringtones or making calls to TV competition lines. A need has been created whereby young people always feel the need to have a handset in their pocket." It is, abc says, a modern signal of identity.

Parents pay

88% of Spanish adolescents say they have a mobile phone for their personal use, according to the specialist research agency Injuve, which operates within the country's labour and social affairs ministry. And while it is parents that generally pick up the bill, youngsters are making more and more use of their phones. The number of respondents in Injuve's 2003 survey who said they used their phone 'frequently' was 82%, up from 76% the previous year. This translates into average spending of €26 per month, abc says, with young men spending, on average and perhaps against expectations, €4 more than their female counterparts on the 'habit'.

Given these figures and the previously-mentioned 1998 INC data, when their were many fewer handsets in circulation (sales have tripled in the interim), one can deduce that mobile telephony has risen to become the principal area of spending by Spanish youngsters. Who knows, in the not-too-distant future young people will be classified in terms of the colour of their phone, the ringtone or the brand they own.

Having the right clothing, nevertheless, continues to be a very important motivator for Spain's youth population, and jeans continue to be near the top of the list. Levi's, which for years represented a way of life for young people, however, admits that the market has been stagnant since the mid-90s, principally as a result of the decrease evidenced in the number of under-25 year-olds, principal buyers of jeans, in addition to changing consumer habits.

Changing brands

It seems adolescents have been deserting 'traditional' brands, but does this mean they are also spending less? No, say consumer associations. There are various reasons for this, they say, but what remains constant is young people's need to identify with their reference group through dressing in a certain way. Thus the strength of groups such as 'grunge', 'tecnos', 'pijos' and 'punkies'.

In the study conducted by the INC in 1998, it was found that "young people's clothing plays an important part in the way groups relate to and integrate with each other. At that time, clothing and footwear were the number 1 item of expenditure in households with children under voting age, representing as much as 60% of expenditure per adolescent.

What young people most aspired to, the report said, was to be 'accepted by their friends'. To this, one might add that adolescents are more liable to spend on impulse and more susceptible to advertising which presents products in the context of happiness, prestige and social success. "Young people today are much more interested in fashion than they used to be and it seems that they are unwilling to tolerate people who do not follow trends or have certain brands in their wardrobe", says Pedro Mansilla, a sociologist and fashoin critic.

By analysing studies dating back to the 1980s, Facua came to the conclusion that "whereas before there was a preference for a restricted number of brands, as in the case of Levi's, these days the trend is directed towards a greater variety of labels".

"It's not that Levi's isn't fashionable", says Mansilla, "but, driven by globalisation, production has been moved to places like Morocco or China, where labour costs less."

Mansilla has a clear idea of the three steps that have contributed to what he calls a 'democratisation of fashion': quality improvements by companies such as H&M or Zara, the lower prices at which companies such as Inditex (owner of Springfield, Bershka, Stradivarius, Pull Bear and Massimo Dutti) can produce clothing and, finally, the greater amount of information available to young people in respect of each brand.

Within all this, jeans, after a 150-year shelf life, retain their importance as a fashion item, abc says.