Dr. Villamandos has studied intellectual history in 1960s and 1970s Spain, and the transition to democracy in the 1980s, when the Franco dictatorship ended. He has published on immigration film studies, collective memory and trauma, and graphic fiction in Spanish.
He has published articles on contemporary issues like immigration, gender and queer studies, urban studies, music and graphic novel. His book El discreto encanto de la subversion (Laetoli, 2011) explores the cultural production of the Barcelona progressive elite, Gauche Divine, during the late 1960s. He has also coedited the volume Un hispanismo para el siglo XXI (Biblioteca Nueva, 2011) on new trends in Peninsular studies. His latest research focuses on cosmopolitanism and Europeanism in Spanish literature during the 1980s, with the revival of literary archetypes like the poet maudit, the flâneur, the vampire, and the dandy.