Writers Facing Urban Conflicts: ‘Prenostalgia’ in the Face of an Era’s End

Literature largely occurs in the city, and the city largely exists in literature. This year, the Madrid Book Fair is dedicated to the quintessential city, the true great city, the most urban of all cities: New York. Additionally, it focuses on two cycles with a broader vision of the urban landscape: The City and Affection and Mosaic City, where various writers and thinkers discuss different aspects of contemporary urban life. It’s a battlefield where issues like housing conflict, expulsion, surveillance, segregation, mental health problems, homelessness, gentrification, and touristification arise—subjects that writers and books have much to say about.

Marta Sanz, author of ‘The Intimates (Memory of Bread and Roses)’ (Anagrama)

“Both cities and literary texts, due to economic globalization, are becoming gentrified places, devoid of memory, homogeneous, where both readers and travelers are reduced to mere tourists wandering the streets in search of recognizable elements that repeat from one place to another. In the texts, we seek familiar moments tied to a monolithic view of literature connected to spectacle. Cities and texts are ceasing to be places of memory or curiosity that stimulate knowledge, affection, or bonds, turning into colder, more alien spaces that are more Instagrammable.”

Clara Morales, author of ‘I Can Almost Not Remember’ (Tránsito)

“The city holds significant presence in the history of literature because, likely, those who write have lived in cities, and this will become increasingly common as populations concentrate in urban areas. That doesn’t mean certain issues have always been reflected, as the writer is conditioned by their social class: if the rental market doesn’t affect you, if urban segregation doesn’t impact you, if evictions don’t concern you, perhaps these are not problems reflected in your work. It seems to me the relationship with the city is akin to work: characters work, but that doesn’t mean work weighs heavily in the plots.”

“As a reader, I am interested in literature that remaps the city. We tend to follow the same routes through the urban landscape: the city we live in is much smaller than the total city. However, some books teach us different things about the city we know, which, although a shared space, harbors significant separations. Literature can make us more aware of each other’s existences.”

Jorge Dioni, author of ‘The Discomfort in Cities’ (Arpa)

“I live in one of those homogeneous peripheries surrounding urban centers, where everything is a five-minute walk away, yet I feel the need to go to the city to see and hear things that I later reflect on here. As I don’t drive, I rely heavily on public transportation; specifically, the train is one of the places where I read and come up with ideas. Another important infrastructure is the public library: I believe that if I didn’t have one nearby, I would never write anything. We must protect the diversity and noise of the city, as culture arises from there.”

Sabina Urraca, author of ‘The Zeal’ (Alfaguara)

“Lately, I think a lot about friends who leave or whom the rise in rents threatens to expel. It terrifies me because I see that ongoing threat voiced by others: ‘You can’t live in Madrid anymore,’ ‘we have to leave,’ ‘we need to come up with a plan B to get out of here.’ I feel a kind of pre-nostalgia, as if the end of an era is approaching, with many people leaving, particularly among those who make me want to live in Madrid. One character in my upcoming book has to leave a large city to live in a camping site on the outskirts due to financial issues. Ultimately, his friendships occur through WhatsApp, which I find interesting, though it is somewhat strange and dystopian.”

“It may be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t usually associate well-being with the countryside and discomfort with the big city as is often done. In natural and tranquil environments, although I enjoy them greatly, I find myself face-to-face with myself. This is often framed positively, but for me, as a writer with such an introspective job, it’s not an experience I always look forward to. The dispersion and variety of stimuli in the city help me step outside of myself, from being an only child who has written since childhood… I get bored with myself. The city, Madrid, in some way relaxes me.”

Eloy Fernández Porta, author of ‘The Black Sprouts: At the Peaks of Anxiety’ (Anagrama)

“I’m interested in anxiety disorders understood as ailments that can serve as a radar for detecting social tensions and conflicts. I’m drawn to what I call ‘clinical self-portrait,’ a genre related to the consumption of medical drugs and psychedelic literature. I also examine how psychological suffering alters friendships and romantic bonds, particularly those occurring in dating apps. Or hyper-productivity as a drive induced by the labor system, but also by supposedly alternative spaces. All of this can relate to contemporary cities. For instance, in The Black Sprouts: At the Peaks of Anxiety, I describe pandemic-stricken Barcelona, with its historic center filled with closed hotels yet souvenir stores open (as they serve as money laundering businesses). Like those stores, many other realities emerge during those days: beggars are the ‘last Mohicans’ left on the streets, and unexpected agreements and solidarities form between them and with others. A homeless woman who spoke some language I didn’t understand rescued me from an episode of anxiety…”

Brenda Navarro, author of ‘Ash in the Mouth’ (Sexto Piso)

“It’s essential to keep an eye on how cities are formed, as this not only helps us understand the economic system but also how social networks, linked to affection and power dynamics, are woven. I have always been interested in exploring in my books how cities shape human misfortunes, as Barcelona, Madrid, or Mexico City are economic centers that, rather than allowing access to a dignified life, grant access to the economy. They do not, however, ensure the exercise of all rights—especially cultural, social, or environmental rights—most of which are violated in cities. One of the goals we can pursue as citizens is to demand that governments acknowledge what culture, social relations, or the environment entail, as it is precisely within these rights that tenderness or care can be exercised much more specifically.”

Lola López Mondéjar, ‘No Narrative. Atrophy of Narrative Capacity and Crisis of Subjectivity’ (Anagrama)

“The issue the city presents is that it is planned without putting its inhabitants at the center, but rather commerce and cars. The city is a device that creates individualities, affecting our most intimate lives. To protect ourselves from the frequency of interactions with people different from ourselves that urban life imposes, we are necessarily pushed towards a rationalization of human relationships, which I have termed ‘a functional use of the other,’ and this professionalization of relationships imposes itself on how we connect in more intimate contexts, dehumanizing us. Thus, the physical proximity enforced in densely populated urban centers does not lead to emotional closeness or greater social cohesion, but often results in unwanted loneliness and lack of recognition.”

Eudald Espluga, author of ‘Don’t Be Yourself. Notes on a Fatigued Generation’ (Paidós)

“I approach the relationship between anxiety and urban spaces from Rosi Braidotti’s perspective, who speaks of a democratic, climatic, knowledge, and economic crisis… This leads to a depletion of the humanist project. I think urban spaces are where the intersection of all these crises is best manifested, the space that enacts a way of subjectivity that is the neoliberal subject, the entrepreneur of oneself. It’s also in cities where new forms of control are established, through technology and especially platform economies. It’s not just that these platforms steal our data, or that cameras and GPS can track and parameterize our existence, but that the neoliberal subject also self-monitors to be more efficient, fit in better, and progress within competition. I’m interested in what utopian narratives and what forms of structuring societies can alter these modes of political engagement, and the practical experiences in housing cooperatives or urban gardens that allow us to imagine a different future that escapes apocalyptic catastrophism.”