Luis del Romero Renau

Mega Events and Urban Conflicts in Valencia, Spain: Contesting the New Urban Modernity

The local and regional administrations of Valencia, Spain, have been working to position the city, which is the countrys third largest in terms of population, as an international destination for luxury tourism through sports mega-events. Valencias new image as a “mega-events city” has been criticized by citizens and urban-based movements on social and environmental grounds, resulting in various urban conflicts. The aim of this paper is to examine the causes and dynamics of these conflicts in order to understand the discourse and rationales behind the criticism. This will also include an examination of the ways in which these conflicts were managed by the local administration, especially in the months leading up to and during the events, when the city was receiving worldwide media coverage. Researching local print media, we focused on urban conflicts that took place in Valencia between 1995 and 2010. We also looked at the performance of urban-based movements and the administration as conflicting actors. One of the main findings was the strong consensual authoritarianism manifested by the administration and mega-event organizers when making decisions and managing urban conflicts related to mega-events.

From NIMBYsm to the 15M: A Decade of Urban Conflicts in Barcelona and Valencia

Abstract The first decade of the 21st century was a period of economic and demographic expansion and impressive urban development in Spains big cities, including Barcelona and Valencia. This growth came along with a great effort to develop new territorial, sectoral and urban plans which would direct it, but which were not always successful. Nevertheless, these planning endeavors were not without critiques from social agents. In fact, throughout that decade we observed a growing distrust towards the institutional forms of citizen representation, and the ways and procedures of urban governance and spatial planning. This paper shows some important results of a systematic analysis based on print-media of urban conflicts related to land-use changes that emerged during a critical time period in two Spanish metropolitan areas: Barcelona and Valencia. The aim of this paper is to compare the evolution of urban conflicts in both cities that occurred between 2002 and 2012, from the point of view of social movements and their activists. The analysis of conflict activity between both cities gives interesting clues about where and why conflicts emerge and adds some pertinent reflections on the increasing problems of metropolitan governance in Spanish cities. During the mentioned period a deep transformation was witnessed in the types of conflicts that tend to emerge in these cities: from the reactive and isolated not in my back yard-like campaigns to broader protest movements like the 15 movement in the 2010s. The new movements appear to be participating actively in land-use or locational conflicts, but in fact reach far beyond these specific plans. They criticize not only the specific plans, but use this criticism to launch broader critiques of how their city is ruled and for whom.AbstractThe first decade of the 21st century was a period of economic and demographic expansion and impressive urban development in Spains big cities, including Barcelona and Valencia. This growth came along with a great effort to develop new territorial, sectoral and urban plans which would direct it, but which were not always successful. Nevertheless, these planning endeavors were not without critiques from social agents. In fact, throughout that decade we observed a growing distrust towards the institutional forms of citizen representation, and the ways and procedures of urban governance and spatial planning. This paper shows some important results of a systematic analysis based on print-media of urban conflicts related to land-use changes that emerged during a critical time period in two Spanish metropolitan areas: Barcelona and Valencia. The aim of this paper is to compare the evolution of urban conflicts in both cities that occurred between 2002 and 2012, from the point of view of social movements ...

Ecovillages in Spain: Searching an emancipatory social transformation?

Abstract Today the second most important country after the United States, in the number of ecovillages, and by far, the most prominent in Europe, is Spain. The question to be addressed here is whether this revival or boom of ecovillages in Spain is an incipient social transformation and cultural change, following Erik Olin Wright theory of emancipatory social transformation. This work is divided into five main sections. The first one introduces three different approaches that remark the importance of ecovillages for radical cultural and social studies. The second part explains the methodology performed for the study of 29 ecovillages in Spain, using six critical variables on material interests and ideology, following Wright’s concepts. The third section explored the set of arguments that are mobilized to support and create an ecovillage project in Spain, and its relationship with the neo-rural movement and grouped in two categories: ideology and material interests. The two final sections present some results on the analysis performed for 29 cases, and a discussion on social reproduction practices performed by ecovillages, dividing it between conventional and interstitial strategies, to contrast the discourse of ecovillages with Wright’s theory.