Spanish Spaces of Crisis

The global financial crisis of 2008 was felt particularly acutely in Spain, and its consequences went well beyond the economic realm. The Spanish state’s inability to protect its citizens from its consequences led to a questioning of the country’s political framework, as well as to a rearticulation of its cultural field. In this pioneering study, Maite Usoz de la Fuente explores how a series of cultural texts (several novels, literary journalism, photographic projects and one graphic novel) published in the decade 2007-17 question the sustainability – environmental, communal, individual – of the hegemonic extractive, growth-oriented capitalist model. Taking space as a thematic and theoretical anchor, the author offers novel (and, in some cases, first) readings of a selection of texts, focussing on how their representations (and, in some cases, redefinitions) of landscape, home and body invite readers to question the feasibility and desirability of an economic growth paradigm dependent on the exploitation of the environment and the precarisation of human lives.