De la Iglesia was an outspoken gay socialist filmmaker relatively unknown outside of Spain, despite a prolific and successful career in his native country. He is best remembered for having portrayed urban marginality and the world of drugs and juvenile delinquency in the early 1980s, and his films serve as an archive of the Spanish marginality of this era. Is other words, his work is closely related to the phenomenon popularly known in Spain as "quinqui cinema". His films are an example of commitment to the immediate reality; they were made with honesty and great risk, against the conformist outlook of most movies of its time. Many of this films also deal with the theme of homosexuality.