A study by Professor Beatriz Santamarina from the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the University of Valencia defines the social movements Salvem and Viu al Cabanyal as a means of restraining neoliberal urban policies and business town planning. The results of this work have just been published in the journal ‘Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares’.
The study, conducted over five consecutive years (2009-2013), "shows the resistance to the process of expropriation and gentrification initiated by both local and regional authorities —that can even be seen as institutional neglect and abandonment— and the capacity of social mobilisation to stop the implementation of urban development policies with great economic potential”, says Santamarina, who reminds us in her work that the neighbourhood of El Cabanyal "hosts the highest number of substandard housing in the city of Valencia, that is, 22%”.
In addition, Santamarina deplores the fact that this Valencian maritime district has been left "at the mercy of mega projects and events for the city, sheltering behind the rhetoric of excellence and competitiveness, and of local policies based on those trends known as city marketing or spectacularised cities".
Santamarina affirms that this model promoted by Valencia’s City Council comes in response to "a town planning based on an economy of intangible goods to compete in the global financial and tourism market". Also, this neighbourhood "has been subjected to victim-blaming policies, that is, administrations blame neighbours for their own situation of helplessness", she says, and she even refers to neighbours as "refugees of the liberal urbanism against real estate mobbing".
GLOCALIZED METROPOLIS
The study by Beatriz Santamarina is part of the research project “Metrópolis glocalizadas: el caso de Valencia. Espectacularización y precarización”, led by Professor of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology Pepa Cucó, and financed through the Plan Nacional I+D+i of the Spanish former Ministry of Science and Innovation, now of Economy and Competitiveness. She has also led other studies about El Cabanyal, such as an investigation into the situation of children in the neighbourhood or a project on educational innovation, conducted with anthropology trainees to recover the memory of the neighbourhood and which resulted in two collective books: Hijos del mar, hijos de la Tierra (2007) and Llàgrimes vora mar. Guerra, postguerra i riuada al Cabanyal (2009).
Professor of Social Anthropology Beatriz Santamarina Campos has a degree in Political Science and Sociology and in Geography and History and she holds a PhD in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid. She teaches and researches in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the University of Valencia and her current lines of work revolve around processes of cultural and natural patrimonialisation and urban conflicts.
«El oficio de la resistencia. Salvem y Viu al Cabanyal como formas de contención del urbanismo liberal». Beatriz Santamarina Campos. Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares, vol. LXIX, núm. 2, p. 305-326, juliol-desembre 2014,
ISSN: 0034-7981, eISSN: 1988-8457,
doi: 10.3989/rdtp.2014.02.003
Last update: 1 de march de 2015 08:40.
News release
