Interrogating Madrid's “Slum of Shame”: Urban Expansion, Race, and Place-Based Activisms in the Cañada Real Galiana

Abstract

Following the spontaneous occupation of Madrid's Puerta del Sol in 2011, many academic accounts have found these mobilizations new and noteworthy for their technological savvy and networked capabilities. In this article, I argue that such depictions fail to capture both the influence of Spanish urbanism's material conditions on certain disadvantaged populations, and the broad diversity of these contemporary activisms. Looking to struggles over the proposed demolition of a squatter settlement in Madrid, I demonstrate how Madrid's planning has propagated racial imaginaries to legitimate dispossession and subvert anti-poverty policies. Second, I examine how resistance and contestation emerge out of specific urban experiences of inequality, and transcend traditional modes of activist organizing through the formation of broad coalitions between various civil society actors. In doing so, I argue that Madrid's mobilizations have paradoxically opened new avenues for the inclusion minority voices, against popular understandings that read rising xenophobia during crisis. Resumen: Un gran número de estudios académicos han analizado las movilizaciones recientes en Madrid, entre ellas la de la Puerta del Sol en 2011, considerándolas novedosas y de gran importancia debido a sus capacidades tecnológicas y naturaleza reticular. En este artículo propongo que dichos análisis no logran captar el impacto de las condiciones materiales del urbanismo español en las poblaciones perjudicadas ni la diversidad dentro del activismo contemporáneo. El artículo analiza las movilizaciones en contra del derribo de un asentamiento chabolista en Madrid y muestra la manera en que la planificación madrileña ha propagado imaginarios raciales con el fin de legitimar procesos de desposesión y subvertir políticas anti-pobreza. El análisis hace énfasis en cómo los movimientos contestatarios y de resistencia surgen de experiencias particulares de desigualdad urbana y cómo estos trascienden mecanismos tradicionales de activismo a la vez que forman coaliciones amplias con diversos actores de la sociedad civil. De esta forma, propongo que-de manera paradójica y en contra de la idea común de que la xenofobia aumenta durante épocas de crisis-las movilizaciones de hoy en día han creado nuevas vías para la inclusión de voces minoritarias.

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