The decades spanning from the 1960s to the 1980s in Spain were marked by a series of significant changes: a flourishing economy fuelled by tourism, widespread migration from rural areas to cities, the dissolution of the African empire, evolving gender and sexual norms, and a political transition from dictatorship to democracy. Volatile Whiteness argues that throughout this period, popular film genres such as comedies, crime thrillers, musicals, and religious cinema aimed to erode the racialized image of Spain as an "Africa of Europe" and establish the nation's belonging in global whiteness.

The book explores how popular films shaped the attitudes of Spanish audiences towards racialized groups even before the onset of mass immigration in the 1990s and traces the construction of the Roma community as an internal threat to the nation’s upward mobility during late Francoism and the subsequent Transition. The book examines films that have retained popularity among contemporary Spanish audiences due to their continued circulation on television and other platforms. In doing so, Volatile Whiteness reflects not only on the meanings that popular films of the past may have had for their original audiences, but also on the ways they may shape the lived experiences of racial minorities in Spain today.