Río, El Matadero and the Nature of Urbanization Matthew I. Feinberg, Susan Larson

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Volume 23, 2019, pp. 175-190 (Article)

Published by University of Arizona DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hcs.2019.0000

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/756736

[ Access provided at 9 Jun 2020 00:32 GMT from Texas Tech. University ] Madrid Río, El Matadero and the Nature of Urbanization

Matthew I. Feinberg Susan Larson Department of World Languages, Department of Classical and Modern Languages Literatures, and Cultures and Literatures Baldwin Wallace University Texas Tech University 275 Eastland Rd. 2906 18th Street Berea, OH 44017 Lubbock, TX 79409 [email protected] [email protected]

Resumen: Este ensayo considera dos proyectos urbanos que juntos han renovado el paisaje de la región sureña de Madrid desde 2007: Madrid Río y El Matadero Madrid de Creación Contemporánea. Mientras que el primer proyecto se asocia con cambiar la ecología ‘natural’ de la ciudad y el segundo del paisaje cultural, ambos Madrid Río y El Matadero mercantilizan los con- ceptos de la sostenibilidad ecológica y la naturaleza. Analizamos la circulación de estos discursos de lo natural y lo ecológico y cómo se relacionan y se expresan a nivel material en el paisaje urbano. De ahí, apuntamos que estos proyectos encuentran nuevas maneras de encerrar, contener, cercar y vender la “Naturaleza” en Madrid a escala global. Como resultado, Madrid Río y El Matadero demuestran cómo la producción cultural estructura la relación y entendimiento de la sensibilidad ecológica. La producción de nuevos ambientes urbanos y la infraestructura que los hacen posible (las condiciones metabólicas y tecnologías que permiten el flujo de energía, comida, información, cuerpos y cosas) están siempre mediados por arreglos institucionales que a veces son democráticos pero a la vez son siempre involucrados en la expansión de la circulación del capital, y por ende un proyecto implícitamente antiecológico.

Palabras clave: ecología urbana, Madrid, gentrificación, Madrid Río, El Matadero Madrid Centro de Creación Contemporánea

Abstract: This essay considers two closely related high-profile urban renewal projects that have altered the landscape of the southern region of Madrid since 2007: Madrid Río and El Matadero Madrid Cen- tro de Creación Contemporánea. While the former is often cast as renovating the ‘natural’ ecology of the city and the latter a renovation of its cultural landscape, both Madrid Río and El Matadero commodify the closely related concepts of ecological sustainability and nature. By analyzing the circulation of these discourses of nature and ecological sustainability along with their material expression in the urban land- scape, we argue that these projects find new ways of enclosing, containing, packaging and selling Nature in Madrid on a global scale. In doing so, the Madrid Río and Matadero throw into relief the ways that cultural production frames our relationship and understanding of ecological sensibility. The production of new urban environments and the infrastructure that makes them possible (the metabolic conditions and technologies that permit for the flow of energy, food, information, bodies, and things) are always mediated by institutional arrangements that are occasionally democratic, but are always deeply commit- ted to the unending expansion of the circulation of capital—a prospect that is implicitly not ecological.

Keywords: urban ecology, Madrid, gentrification, Madrid Río, El Matadero Madrid Centro de Creación Contemporánea

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 23, 2019 176 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Matthew I. Feinberg is adrid is part of a world-wide network of what Saskia an assistant professor of Sassen calls ‘global cities’ in that it is a serious con- Spanish in the Depart- tender in contemporary inter-city competition for ment of World Languages, Minvestment and tourism. At the same time, however, a significant Literatures, and Cultures at Baldwin Wallace Univer- number of influential economic and political theorists from sev- sity. His research examines eral disciplines as early as 2007 have looked to Madrid’s particular the physical and imaginary infrastructure and urban politics as a kind of ‘canary-in-the-coal- contours of contemporary mine’ test case scenario for their home countries because they, Spanish culture through too, were looking down the barrel at the possibility of devastated the study of dramatic texts, housing markets, bank bailouts, and austerity measures (López performance spaces, urban and Rodríguez 2011; Swyngedouw 2011; Harvey 2012; Cas- planning documents, and the transformation of ur- tells 2012; Brenner 2013). Portugal, Italy, Greece and : ban space in twenty-first these four Southern European countries or ‘P-I-G-S,’ with century Madrid. their bids for economic aid, were cautionary tales for the rest of the Eurozone and the world. The 15M movement Susan Larson is the Charles (a precursor to New York City’s Occupy Wall Street) that B. Qualia Professor of Ro- erupted in Madrid’s Puerta del in May of 2011 and later in mance Languages at Texas plazas across Spain would open the door to a new urban politics Tech University and Execu- tive Editor of the Romance emphasizing horizontality, participation, and a celebration of Quarterly. Her research the commons. Since then, 15M expanded into a broader, long- lies at the intersection of term march toward political radicalization that resulted in the Cultural and Urban Stud- kinds of serious discussions of municipalism that have not taken ies and explores competing place in Europe since the Eurocommunism movement of the discourses of modernity in late 1960s and early 1970s. In the last ten years in particular, Spain since 1900. Madrid has witnessed radical changes in demographic trends, the failure of the neoliberal state to control the economic crisis, changes in the global division of labor, cracks in globalization’s myth of the mobility of people and goods, the increasing social and economic segregation of the city through gentrification, and last but certainly not least, impending ecological threats that force the city’s inhabitants to alter their current understanding of what a city is and can be. This essay looks at the discourses of nature and ecology of Madrid Río and El Matadero Madrid Centro de Creación Contemporánea, two closely related projects that are show- pieces of Madrid’s urban reform in recent years. As we have argued earlier (Feinberg and Larson “Cultivating the Square”) drawing on the work of geographer Erik Swyngedouw, “Nature as a concept has become a rhetorical and ideological tool to promote a neoliberal spatial reorganization of the globe” (116) As indicated in the introduction to this volume, this framing of nature plays a key role in perpetuating the economic systems underlying the ecological crisis before us. Recent directions in urban studies question nature/urban binaries and have Matthew I. Feinberg and Susan Larson 177 encouraged us to think of the city (in this As we will examine in the examples of case, Madrid) as an “ecosystem of cultural, Madrid Río and El Matadero, the produc- political and material relationships” (Fein- tion of new urban environments and the berg and Larson, The Ecological Imperative infrastructure that makes them possible 2016) and we argue that ‘natural’ or ‘ecologi- (the metabolic conditions and technologies cal’ concepts of the city should rely not only that permit for the flow of energy, food, on biological relationships that produce less information, bodies and things) that secure pollution, less waste, and have more nature their functioning are always mediated by (i.e., green space), but should also be founded institutional arrangements that are occa- on a cultural experience of place that allows sionally democratic but are always deeply for more just and maybe, humane intersocial committed to the unending expansion of connections as well as between people and the circulation of capital. and their non-human cohabitants. How and where people have interactions with artistic production in the city reveals much about Madrid Río: An Ingenious the material conditions in which people live. Adaptation of Nature to Culture Ecological degradation has become in- creasingly visible on a planetary scale in recent The urban has always taken shape through decades. Bruno Latour writes that without the an ongoing relationship to nature, of idea that we have entered into a ‘New Climatic course, in Madrid as elsewhere. As Daniel Regime’ we cannot understand the explosion Frost explains in his Cultivating Madrid, of social and economic inequality, the scope his study of public space and middle-class of deregulation and privatization, and the rise culture in the Spanish capital during the of populism (15). Subsequently, there is a new nineteenth century, appreciation within historical-geographical material thought for the importance of the so- the relations between natural and cial and material production of urban nature. urban space are inescapably bound Erik Swyngedouw makes clear in his 2018 up in efforts to modernize the essay “The Urbanization of Capital and the Spanish capital, which becomes an Production of Capitalist Natures” that the key overdetermined symbol of national concern of urban political ecology should be culture. (21)

not what kind of urban natures are Frost carefully analyzes novels, paintings, present in the city, but rather about essays and urban treatises written in and the capitalist form of urbanization of about the Spanish capital between 1833 natures: the process through which and 1890, to better understand the dialec- all manner of non-human ‘stuff’ tical relationships between nature and cul- is socially mobilized, discursively ture, order and artifice in Madrid’s public scripted, imagined, economically landscapes. Public gardens in Madrid enrolled (enclosed, privatized, and commodified) and physically me- began to open in earnest after the death tabolized/transformed to produce of Ferdinand VII in 1833, which ushered socio-ecological assemblages that in a period of liberal parliamentary rule. It support the urbanization process. would not take long for Madrid’s authors (14) to write about what these new spaces 178 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies meant to the city’s inhabitants. Frost looks order for tourism to succeed, class difference to Isidora, the protagonist of Benito Pérez has to be erased from the urban landscape Galdós’s 1881 novel La desheredada, as and minority groups removed, or more one of the most insightful and articulate aggressively policed. Sharon Zukin argues voices to define the central characteristics that parks are key to how a city “uses culture of public gardens such as the Park, as an economic base” (25), and the Retiro which was open to the public after 1868. exemplifies this shift in the role of nature Isidora calls the park “un campo urbano, in the age of increasingly flexible and global una ciudad de árboles y arbustos . . . una urban capital accumulation with increased ingeniosa adaptación de la Naturaleza policing and control over who can and can- a la Cultura” [an urban countryside, a not occupy the park. city of trees and shrubs . . . an ingenious Similarly, in the mingling of aquatic adaptation of Nature to Culture] (quoted flows and the flows of global capital circulat- in Frost 25). Throughout the realist urban ing around the Madrid Río, the redevelop- novel, nature is equated with the body ment of Madrid’s Manzanares River into of the protagonist Isidora, and both are a linear park as it courses through the city packaged, contained and commodified in also calls attention to the way urban plan- order to satisfy the appetites of Madrid’s ning ‘discursively scripts [and imagines]’ city dwellers. the natural world. There is a certain irony Isidora’s experience typifies the capi- to this redevelopment project given that the tal’s green bourgeois playgrounds and spaces Manzanares river has rarely been celebrated of leisure as ‘campos urbanos’ in the 1880s. as one of Madrid’s endearing features—espe- Retiro Park, and other major green spaces cially to foreign eyes. There is, for example, in Madrid one hundred years later, have the story from the late sixteenth century of a somewhat different position within the an ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor who sardonically celebrated the greatness flows of urban capital, however. As Benja- of the river because it was both “navegable min Fraser argues in his 2007 essay “Ma- en coche y a caballo” [navigable by carriage drid’s Retiro Park as Publicly-Private Space and on horseback] ("El Manzanares" 902). and the Spatial Problems of Spatial Theory,” In 1833, the travelogue of the Englishman Richard Ford goes even further and refers to Madrid’s Retiro Park [from the 1980s on] represents a turn away the Manzanares as “‘a miserable brook’ . . . from nineteenth-century recreation- which has the appearance of a river without al uses of parks for respite and escape a river’s flowing water” (quoted in Ferrer 62). towards a twentieth- and twenty-first Since the river’s canalization in various stages century model that values city space from the 1920s through the 1940s, as it passes as important for capitalist accumula- through the capital, the river has often ap- tion. (687) peared more as urban canal than free-flowing river. Barely navigable as it streams through Fraser points out that renovations to the its channel of concrete and granite, the Río Retiro and its surrounding area in the 1980s Manzanares is often overlooked as a feature and 1990s were part of Madrid’s desire to of Madrid’s physical geography. Over the last restore its patrimony as much as they were to decade, since the construction of the 10-kilo- preserve a tourist-friendly sense of place. In meter greenway park called Madrid Río that Matthew I. Feinberg and Susan Larson 179

Fig. 1 La Pasarela by architect Dominique Perrault. Photo by Matthew I. Feinberg opened in 2011, the river appears to have Madrid Río. The presence of the three Puentes become more central to Madrid’s image, and Cascaras, covered pedestrian bridges whose even finds its way into a 2016 Fodor’s listicle ceilings have mosaics made by the Spanish of the “"16 Under-the-radar Things to Do artist Daniel Conogar, reinforce this idea in Madrid" (Kemper). Celebrating the river of the park as cultural object (see Figure 2). as an urban development project, the writer Likewise, we might look to the park’s eastern refers to the trails, to the green space, and end where we find the Centro de Creación even to the performance spaces that make up Contemporánea Matadero Madrid, a dynamic the park. Alongside the description, though, and diverse cultural site with spaces dedicated notably, is not an image of the river, but rather to theater, cinema, art exhibitions, and even of the visually stunning Pasarela de Argan- a small architectural and design library and zuela designed by French starchitect Domi- makerspaces. nique Perrault (See Fig. 1). The spiraling Despite the clear cultural array around metal form of the pedestrian bridge suggests which the park is built and organized, Ginés that within the discursive currents of the Garrido, the lead architect of the project Madrid Río, the river itself is merely an from the firm Burgos and Garrido, entitles afterthought—particularly when the park his 2017 overview for the Revista PH91 “Ma- is listed amongst a range of other cultural drid Río, o el retorno de la urbe a la geografía sites like the Museo del Prado, the Reina del Manzanares” [Madrid Río or the City’s Sofía museum, the Real, and others, Return to the Geography of Manzanares]. as is the case in the Fodor’s article and other This focus on the geography of the river similar descriptions of tourist itineraries in is echoed in key words or phrases that the Madrid. author uses to tag the article like ‘ecología,’ Paradoxically, the Madrid Río park ‘zonas verdes,’ ‘medio ambiente,’ and ‘frente seems to elide the natural feature of the fluvial’ [ecology, green zones, environment, Manzanares River in favor of what could riverfront] (Garrido 100).Contrasting or be understood as the cultural object called complementing this ecological discourse 180 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies is what might be considered a more urban as a means to create not only an ecology suit- and/or sociocultural one that articulates able for non-human living things, but also the Madrid Río in terms of, in his words, the ecology of the social environment. As ‘espacio público’ and ‘patrimonio’ [public David Harvey posits in his 1996 exploration space, patrimony] (Garrido 100). There is, of the intersections between environmental- in this array of key words, an allusion to the ism and geography, “the very design of the fundamental tension found in a project like transformed ecosystem is redolent of its social the Madrid Río. It is a tension distilled in relations” (Justice, 184), and thus deeply con- the duality of the park’s name: Madrid and nected to what we have elsewhere called the Río. Through linguistic juxtaposition, the ‘cultural ecology of the city’ (Feinberg and name alludes to a union between the built Larson “Cultivating the Square” 115)—a environment of the city and its physical term that refers to the interdependent sys- geography, “una intersección entre el tejido tems of cultural production that produce the construido y el campo biológico del río” [an socio-spatial environment. Our approach to intersection between the river’s constructed the Madrid Río project takes, as a point of de- urban fabric and its biological field] (21), as parture, Harvey’s suggestion in Justice, Nature, Garrido describes it. Amidst this union is the and the Geography of Difference (1996) that key, perhaps, to the article’s final key term, we consider environmental debates “not for ‘sostenibilidad social’ [social sustainability] what they have to say about the environment (100). The Madrid Río project is imagined or nature, but for what it is they say about (at least in the mind of its lead architect) political-economic organization” (176). It is

Fig. 2 Puente Cascara by Daniel Conogar. Photo by Matthew I. Feinberg Matthew I. Feinberg and Susan Larson 181 safe to assume that Harvey would approve pines of the sierra to the holm oak, pine, wil- of taking this last point and changing the low, and ash trees of the dehesa found at the emphasis from political-economic organiza- lower elevations (see Figure 3). It is hard to tion to urbanism and urbanization in the imagine these idyllic landscapes as the river twenty-first century. For these reasons, enters the city near Valdemarín and passes the union of Madrid and Río is an uneasy by the interchange of the M-30 and M-40 one, or, at the very least, a problematic one highways on the northwest edge of the city. because, despite the frequent ecological Here, the river’s trajectory becomes implic- discourses found in the writing of the de- itly more urban, following the M-30 circu- signers, architects, and city planners about lar highway as it skirts the south-western the project, it participates within a broader edge of the city. The river’s journey along system of cultural production and urbaniza- this trajectory becomes a tour through the tion. As the physical geography of the river is various periods of the city’s cultural history: appropriated into a broader ‘urbanization of Juan de Herrera’s Puente de Segovia from consciousness’—to use another of Harvey’s the sixteenth century; Pedro de Ribera’s terms (1985)—it throws into relief the con- Baroque Puente de Toledo; the miraculous flicts and conundrums that emerge from the springs of the Ermita de and intersection of discourses of the urban, the its famous praderas [grassy meadows] im- natural, and the cultural. mortalized by Francisco de and the To consider the Madrid Río project countless celebrations of Madrid’s patron only as cultural object is to forget that even saint. Downstream, one encounters the the most urbanized rivers—the Gowanus vestige of more modern sites of pilgrimage Canal, the Cuyahoga River, the Nervión like the now demolished Vicente Calderón river in Bilbao—are still always natural—a Stadium, the former home to Atlético de linear aquatic thread connecting the various Madrid, one of Madrid’s most important strands of the watershed. As the Manzanares football clubs (the most important for cer- travels its hardscaped path through the city it tain fans). Throughout much of this urban remains the same river as the one that emerges passage, the river seems subjugated to the at its headwaters some 1,400 meters of eleva- functionalist urban plans from the 1940s of tion above the capital near the Navacerrada Pedro Bigador and his efforts to mitigate the pass in the often-snowy peaks of the Sierra river’s periodic flooding. Guadarrama. Winding southwards out of the Beginning near the Puente de To- Central System mountains, the river changes ledo, the river takes both a literal and more form near the towns of Manzanares el Real figurative turn as it begins to angle in an and later near the royal villas of to easterly direction. The terrain becomes more pause in large, human-constructed reservoirs ambiguous: neither merely a natural feature before continuing on its journey towards the of the physical geography of the meseta, nor Jarama river some fifty-seven kilometers away. the functionalist conduit for the effluvium Before encountering the scattered housing of the city. It is here that it becomes or enters developments and bedroom communities that the Madrid Río park. Often likened to New now defend the perimeter of the metropolis, York’s Highline, this linear greenway differs the river traverses the diverse landscapes of the in that, instead of repurposing an aban- ecotone formed in the interface of the various doned piece of urban infrastructure, the biomes: from the creeping juniper and Valsaín Madrid Río project is literally underpinned 182 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Fig. 3 Río Manzanares on the outskirts of Madrid. Photo by Matthew I. Feinberg by nearly nine and a half kilometers of the cafés, and a restaurant. For many of the western branch of the M-30 highway and working-class residents on the south side its junctions via a complex network of under of the river, whose median income hovers ground roads at a cost of nearly 3.6 billion between 30,000 and 17,000 euros a year, dollars. The park itself was the product of a these amenities are a welcome addition 2005 design competition carried out by the to neighborhoods that have historically municipal government. The winning entry been devoid of any legitimate public space, in the competition came from a team of ignored because of their physical disconnec- engineers, architects, landscape designers, tion from the city center, and perpetually biologists, and sociologists led by the afore- degraded by the roar of the M-30 highway mentioned architectural offices of Burgos (Garrido 106). Reinvigorating the newly and Garrido, but also included others such available surface of the river has not only as Porras La Casta, Rubio and Álvarez-Sala, rearticulated the relationship between the and the Dutch design firm West 8. The park city center and the river, but also reintegrat- offers residents and visitors access to nearly ed these historically isolated communities. 1,500 acres of open space as it follows the In addition to its more traditional park contours of the river and a connection amenities, the Madrid Río park is unique to thirty kilometers of bike paths, eight because of the way that it celebrates the different sports installations (including a river’s natural ecology, while also taking on skate park and basketball courts), fifteen its role as an object for cultural consumption. playgrounds, spaces for performances, two Indeed, in the co-authored article written Matthew I. Feinberg and Susan Larson 183 for ARQ magazine, Francisco Burgos and Iberian Peninsula and acts as a cabinet of Ginés Garrido suggest that “El proyecto se em- curiosities for the capital. It is a taxonomic prende como una sucesión de acontecimientos Kilometer Zero that gathers, organizes, and memorables del norte al sur de la ciudad” [the mediates the understanding of the rest of project unfolds as a succession of memorable the peninsula, and lends the park a slight events from the north to the south of the city] imperialist tinge. In the discursive imagining (20). These memorable events include, for of Garrido and his architectural team, the example, the Salón de Pinos that the design Madrid Río project is suddenly not merely firm West 8 describes as achoreography of a park, but rather like an ecological version 8,000 pine trees and which according to of Jorge Luis Borges’s Aleph—containing the architectural webzine Archeye contains all the ecosystems of the peninsula on the nineteenth step of the cellar. In an ecological a repertoire of cuts, and a selection frame, this horticultural abundance of the of uniquely shaped trees, combined project is described as the new lungs of the with inclined planting [which] lends city, and thus seen as a means of improving a natural and sculptural character to the environment, not only at the municipal the space, creating a botanical monu- and the regional scale, but also as a tool for ment. (Ortiz de Landazuri et. al) mitigating the global crisis of climate change. While these aspirations are noble, Thus, nature functions less as—or within— urban blogger José Fariña points out that an ecological system, but rather as a monu- by hiding the cars almost literally under the ment. Notably, it is not just sculptural in rug of the city, the project does not do much character, but has been crafted to symbol- to deemphasize the role of automobiles in ize the broader natural environment. The giving form to Madrid’s metropolitan area. horticultural tribute includes 35,000 adult Fariña’s critique also cogently points out that trees, 2,000 smaller trees, 400,000 bushes, the park successfully connects the various that are combined with the already-existing neighborhoods through the construction flora present in Madrid’s landscape. Like- or rehabilitation of twenty-one bridges, but wise, the use of granite for a number of that the failure to connect these neighbor- decorative and functional features through- hoods in a linear way, along the length of out the park both evokes—according to the the park through public transportation like architects—both the stone found in the light rail or buses, limits the connections quarries of the center of the peninsula and across neighborhoods that are not adjacent. the granite batholiths of La Pedriza that Likewise, other critiques of the bike paths adorn the base of the Sierra Guadarrama. online suggest that they appear to have been Yet this ornate display of nature not only built by people that do not actually ride bikes evokes the ecosystem of the Río Manzanares for transportation, and, therefore, service and the highlands of the central meseta as it cycling flaneurs casually consuming the park, is organized into three distinct districts to rather than creating an actual alternative for reflect different regional forest-types found communicating the city. across Spain: the Atlantic and Mediterra- These critiques of the ecological nean coasts as well as the ecosystems of the value of the project and its associations Manzanares fluvial system. The flora of the with what might be called ‘green growth’ park reflects the various ecosystems of the are put into a broader context when we 184 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies consider other more subtle consequences it becomes yet another factor in what that accompany this type of redevelop- has been called the touristification of the ment. As an ecological spectacle of sorts, city—that is, a gentrification caused by the Río Madrid project perpetuates a tourism. certain progressive image of the city that can be used in promotional materials El Matadero: Democratic for both real estate development and for tourists. For example, Garrido and Burgos Cultural Ecology or Eco-Friendly celebrate the fact that the project has led Gentrification? to a doubling of housing values in the area (25). Likewise, we might note that While the Río Madrid uses the discourse of a recent Business Insider article lists the urban design to linguistically and materially adjacent neighborhood of as one make the natural landscape into a cultural of the twenty-five most popular neighbor- object, El Matadero Madrid Centro de hoods in the world whose AirBnB book- Creación Contemporánea—found at the ings have grown 228% percent in recent eastern end of the Madrid Río park—also years (Tkaczyk). Despite the ecological leverages ecological discourse as a means discourses that are used to describe it by of cultural production. The Matadero is designers, architects, and city planners, just the latest culture-based project to alter when the Río Madrid is understood a Spanish city’s landscape in recent years. alongside the city’s cultural attractions, From the 1992 Olympic Games that sold

Fig. 4 View of the Matadero and one of the Puente Cascaras from Mirador Río 2. Photo by Matthew I. Feinberg Matthew I. Feinberg and Susan Larson 185 the success story of Barcelona’s regeneration however, it is a notable emphasis on the process and Bilbao’s ‘Guggenheim effect’ fetishization of nature in ways that draw through to the 1990s, certain neighbor- attention to the changing relationship hoods of Spain’s cities have suffered the con- between the human and non-human sequences of gentrification. In Barcelona, through Madrid’s history. it is the Raval and Barrio Chino; while in El Matadero has a lot in common Madrid, the names of neighborhoods like with another, equally high-profile, eco- Malasaña, Chueca, Las Letras, Triball and friendly park space and cultural center: Lavapiés have nearly become synonymous New York City’s Highline, the close- with gentrification, either as examples of linked Hudson Yards Project, and ‘the a transformed neighborhood, or as sites Shed,’ which in 2013 received $50 mil- where conflicts over housing, public space, lion from the City of New York to build and tourism continue to rage. Sequera and what is, in essence, a performing-arts shell Janoschka argue in their case study of Triball that glides along rails and seats 1,200 and Lavapiés that gentrification in Madrid people. Despite their progressive artistic has its own particularities, such as the mas- and ecological bonafides, the ‘Shed’ and sive influx of more than 5 million migrants the Highline cannot be extricated from since 2000; the key role that high levels the 20 billion dollar mega-plan located of public administration have historically on the 12-acre site behind Penn Station played in Madrid; the tendency to favor and Madison Square Garden that will the reconversion of working-class neighbor- eventually hook the High Line with a hoods through commercial restructuration new No. 7 subway station, made pos- in Spain, and, lastly, how resistance to gen- sible by new private / public investment trification in Spain has been theoretically strategies (and a project in which Michael framed by a close collaboration between Bloomberg invested $75 million dollars of social movements and academics like those his own money). Madrid’s equivalent of at the interdisciplinary research collective El ‘Shed,’ simply called El Matadero [‘The Observatorio Metropolitano (Sequera and Slaughterhouse’], is a skillfully renovated Janoschka 378-9) space located in an area called la Dehesa The commonalities between the de Arganzuela on the Manzanares River above-mentioned gentrification processes on the southern edge of the city and one and the El Matadero project that accom- of the anchors of the Madrid Río project. panies the Madrid Río initiative are clear: First constructed in 1911, it originally all of them revalorize land close to the his- consisted of 48 pavilions that made up toric city center in ways that rearticulate what was once an abattoir and livestock their economic function and role in the market and one of the most iconic in- symbolic imaginary. All of these initiatives dustrial establishments in Madrid that structure investment policies around joint was used until 1996 for these original actions between public administrations purposes. After a brief stint in the 1990s, and private concerns in order to bolster when the stalls for cattle were converted capital investment in commercial, cultural into the headquarters for Spain’s National and real estate activities. If there is one Ballet and National Dance Company, the difference in the strategies being used in complex, and the Madrid Río, began to the case of Madrid Río and El Matadero, be seen as anchor projects for the city 186 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies leader’s redevelopment of the city cen- recognize the importance of the cul- ter’s southern perimeter. In part due to tural and creative industries and their the complex’s extraordinary neo-mudéjar potential contribution to economic brickwork, Madrid’s City Council decided recovery. The city [will] provide sup- to turn this space into an enormous arts port for high quality cultural projects center and cultural laboratory that began that promote employment, col- laborate with other private and public to take shape in earnest in 2007. sector bodies to develop municipal El Matadero preserves and celebrates cultural activity, boost new models its historic authenticity not only visually of financing and seek to establish through its iconic architecture but also Madrid as a first-rate international linguistically through names and refer- tourist destination. [ . . . ] Impacts can ences that allude to the meat production be analyzed according to two axes: ur- facility and the working-class communi- ban regeneration and profile raising. ties that surrounded it for more than a Matadero Madrid activities have had century. The banks of the Manzanares an impact on urban regeneration in have always been where Madrid placed a non-central area. It is revitalizing, its abattoirs, and the palimpsest of these culturally and economically, the working-class neighborhoods remains in periphery of south Madrid, extend- the nomenclature of meat and blood that ing its cultural activity to other parts of the city. (“Matadero Madrid” np) still defines the cartography for present- day tourists who flow down the sloping Those involved in making decisions about streets from the Plaza de Cascorro for the Sunday-morning open-air market known the space and its use were tasked with mak- as ‘El Rastro’ [the Trail] located along the ing El Matadero another cultural showcase Ribera de Curtidores [meaning ‘riverside to be used in the inter-city competition on of tanners’] and the adjacent streets and which so much of our contemporary cit- alleys between the Calle ies depend; a process that would result in and the Ronda de Toledo, just north of turning the working-class neighborhoods the historic slaughterhouses. The Rastro’s surrounding El Matadero into yet more enduring etymology forever connects the ‘creative zones’ or ‘cultural hubs’ that might tanneries that were located in Ribera de spur private investment, redevelopment, Curtidores to El Matadero by the rastros and social transformation (i.e. gentrifica- [trails] of blood that the slaughtered cattle tion). El Matadero, working with funding left in the streets of La neighbor- from the European Union’s Culture for hood down to the abattoirs located on Cities and Regions program, articulates the river. in this document the close connection In 2012, El Matadero, working with between urban revitalization (planned the City of Madrid, launched a clearer gentrification), new modes of financing strategy called the Plan Estratégico de that facilitate private-public partnerships, Cultura del Ayuntamiento de Madrid and works under the premise that culture 2012-15 (PECAM) [Strategic Cultural is an ‘industry.’ El Matadero occupies a Plan for City Government of Madrid 65,000 square meter area and is organized 2012-15]. The city’s stated goal in this around 9 distinct projects, four of which plan was to are operated and controlled by Madrid’s Matthew I. Feinberg and Susan Larson 187

City Council and their cultural initiatives. critic Edwin Heathcoate says looks “like a These include theIntermediate , a space set gash of freshly slaughtered cow” (“Matadero aside for activities that bring in residents Madrid, Spain” np). from the surrounding areas; the Naves de Hand in hand with the visual and Español that house national and interna- architectural references to animals that tional theater productions; the Oficina de underline so many aspects of El Matadero Coordinación that contains art galleries; is the constant attention to the importance space for artists in residence and archives, of plant life and urban sustainability. Under and the spectacular Cineteca Madrid, the umbrella program named Intermediæ, dedicated to the showing and discussion of El Matadero has, according to their official documentary film. The other five structures website, created a series of spaces that making up the Matadero arts complex are privately run and include the Central de operates as a means for explora- Diseño, the Extensión AVAM, the Casa del tion research and experimentation. Lector, the building of the Germán Sánchez Process and participation are the Ruiperez Foundation, and lastly, the Fac- formulas for its development. It toría Cultural, a kind of open workspace works with the community; ecology, and incubator for up-and-coming creative art and activism; games as a form of collaborations. exploration; visual culture; archival El Matadero’s adaptive reuse of processes and memory; and the Cre- industrial-scaled space is a far cry from ate Arts Grants program, as a way to collectively define the institution. Santiago Calatrava’s extravagant, expensive, ("Qué es Intermediæ") and grossly over-scaled City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia that serves as a decay- ing monument to Spain’s economic boom The most notable, ecologically-focused years. This project on the Manzanares used space making up this project may be the a variety of extraordinary architects (many carefully curated Avant-Garden, a project of whom were under- or unemployed after sponsored by the French-German group the economic crisis of 2007) to use every Atelier La Baltoin that consists of a long aspect of the already-existing structure and corridor along the Paseo de la Chopera. combine it with cheap industrial materials, The primary flower chosen for the garden such as exposed concrete, iron, steel mesh, is the rose, but many other perennial and yards and yards of plastic butcher’s plants have been introduced, and there curtains to create a visually fascinating and are regularly-held workshops and meet- open series of spaces that constantly allude ings that are open to anyone interested in to the animals that previously inhabited maintaining the space and learning about the spaces. Perhaps one of the most stun- how to create a network of such reuse of ning of the structures is the Casa del Lector green space with other communities in [House of the Reader] designed by Anton Madrid such as the Huerta de Roberto in García Abril that brings together three of , Esta es una Plaza in Lavapiés the original meat storehouses and is made and the Huerta de Madrid Salud in Usera, of brick, cast iron, and bright expanses of with similar initiatives. Another point of white that serve as a contrast to a bright red ecological reflection and interest is the staircase that looks like what architectural ‘Depósito de especies,’ which has been 188 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies repurposed out of the water tank of the Indeed, the flows of the river and of the slaughterhouse that has been turned into walkers, bikers, and skaters along the linear a kind of plant memorial or archive; what park echo a different kind of flow across the El Matadero calls a ‘Noah’s Ark’ of plant river from the Matadero. There, consumers, and insect species found around capital, and goods flow through the Plaza Río today, and accessible close to the main 2, a 40, 0000 square foot commercial center entrance of the Legazpi roundabout. with more than 160 stores, restaurants, and Interactive connectors, modern cities kiosks. These include Starbucks, Häagen bring people and ideas together and create Dazs, Zara, Mango, and even a Five Guys new spaces for them to recombine in ways Burgers. The top of the building is adorned that make possible all sorts of artistic creativ- with the Mirador Río 2, a vantage point that ity, technological innovation and, of course, allows one to visually consume the Matadero economic growth. As we attempt to show in complex, and the adjacent section of the this essay, Madrid Río and El Matadero are Madrid Río park against the backdrop of the dynamic urban experiments that open up op- metropolis (See Figure 4). portunities to better understand the changing The intertwined marketing of the relationship between the city, nature, and the Madrid Río project, with that of the mall, future of the intersections between human cannot be untangled from the Pryconsa real- and non-human life forms in the age of eco- estate group’s large residential construction logical crisis. Urban planning, architecture, project just down the road, upon which a and art are some of the most powerful ways large sign on the roof reads ‘Aticos en venta’ that we as humans have to satisfy our need [Lofts for Sale]. That one of the company’s to engage with nature: our need for beauty; main shareholders is the real-estate trust Saint our need for emotional connection; and last Croix Holding Immobilizer alludes to the way but not least our need for collective engage- that the Madrid Río—whether intentionally ment with the physical world. Any collective or not—has already begun to attract capital impetus looking for solutions to the ecological investment. Along with these real estate problems we face needs culture in the sense projects, the rental market continues to trans- that it needs the inspiration of a poetic, imagi- form the area as AirBnB bookings increase native love or appreciation of nature. Artistic by leaps and bounds in the neighborhoods expression and nature are also exceptionally surrounding the confluence of the Madrid good at giving us a chance to engage in critical Río and El Matadero. Both projects fetishize dialogue with previous radical social move- nature, but, unfortunately, have been quickly ments that have developed rich cultures of assimilated into Madrid’s urban development resistance and visions of possible futures from strategy. Despite the best efforts to transform which we can learn. This most recent use of the urban cultural ecology of the metropolis, Nature with a capital ‘N’ by public and private these projects—it seems—have merely con- interests in Madrid, as a key component of its tinued the status quo, what Luis Prádanos twenty-first-century capitalist accumulation has described as the “dominant imaginary strategy, tied to the use of the culture industry of economic growth.” (11). The problem, to as municipal business initiative, however, runs quote geographer Erik Swyngedouw once the risk of depoliticizing, compartmentalizing more, is that “with an overly fetishized notion and marketing the ‘ecological’ right out of of Nature there can be no pursuit of solutions existence for everyday urban citizens. outside of a capitalist framework to resolve Matthew I. Feinberg and Susan Larson 189 our growing ecological crisis” (276). Projects greening of the city full circle. The workers like Madrid Río and El Matadero reminds us putting the finishing touches on the Edi- that the challenge of climate change asks us to ficio España (now the 26 story, 550-room reconsider the ecological context of the built Hotel RIU luxury hotel) that looms over environment, not through the urbanization the plaza, the appearance of minimalist, of nature—a process that converts Nature into exquisitely designed collaborative “work a cultural object—but rather by cultivating spaces” for the creative cognitariat form- cultural ecologies that imagine a post-growth ing the base of the gig economy, and the urban environment. recent appearance of a store called ‘Vegan Doughnuts’ in the last month in the for- AFTERWARD: Renaturing merly middle- and working class, mixed- the City? use residential neighborhood immediately behind the hotel, mark the battle lines for We finished this essay in June of 2019 against what’s in store for the inhabitants of this the backdrop of Madrid’s latest battle over area in the years ahead. who will win and who will lose the ‘right to the city’ as a result of the renovation of the Works Cited Plaza de España, an iconic space marking the end of the third and last section of the Brenner, Neil. “Theses on Urbanization.” Public Gran Vía completed in the 1950s, ringed by Culture, vol. 25, no. 1, 2013, pp. 85-114. modern skyscrapers and home to a monu- Burgos, Francisco and Garrido, Ginés. “Parque ment to Cervantes himself. As of this writing, Río Manzanares.” Ríos Urbanos, special is- it is undoubtedly the city’s most ambitious sue of ARQ, no. 72, 2009, pp. 20-25. renovation project and the construction is Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope: surrounded by temporary safety barriers that Social Movements in the Internet Age. Pol- define the new space as “una actuación que ity, 2012. contribuye a la ‘renaturalización de la ciudad’ “El Manzanares.” Blanco y Negro, no. 902, 1908, pp. 14-15. [an operation that contributes to the renatur- Fariña, José. “Madrid Río y el Manzanares.” El ing of the city]. Slogans for the project written blog de José Fariña: urbanismo, territorio on the safety barriers include ‘De Madrid al y paisaje, 19 Oct. 2010. elblogdefarina. campo’ [From Madrid to the countryside], blogspot.com/2010/10/madrid-yelman- ‘Una plaza más verde’ [A greener plaza], ‘Un zanares.html. Accessed 27 Apr. 2019. proceso participativo’ [A participatory pro- Feinberg, Matthew and Susan Larson. “Cultivat- cess] and ‘Movilidad sostenible” [Sustainable ing the Square: Trash, Recycling and the mobility]. Cultural Ecology of Post-Crisis Madrid.” The project’s stated mission presented Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates, on these barriers to the many thousands of edited by Katarzyna Beilin and William people walking by every day is to bring the Viestenz, Hispanic Issues Series Vol. 42, Vanderbilt UP, 2016. pp. 113-42. Casa del Campo to the Gran Vía by weav- ––––––. “The Ecological Imperative of Urban ing together the Gran Vía, Calle Princesa, Cultural Studies.” A Polemical Companion Parque del Oeste, Templo de Debod, Plaza to Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian de Oriente, Sabatini Gardens, Campo Debates. Vol. 7. Online open forum for del Moro and, last but not least on the discussion of essays (2016): 63-69. http:// list, Madrid Río, which would bring this hdl.handle.net/11299/202294 190 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

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