Table Of ContentEcuadorians in Madrid
HISPANIC URBAN STUDIES
B ENJAMIN FRASER is Professor and Chair of Foreign Languages and
Literatures in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East
Carolina University, North Carolina, US. He is the editor of the J ournal of
Urban Cultural Studies and the author, editor, and translator of book and arti-
cle publications in Hispanic Studies, Cultural Studies, and Urban Studies.
SUSAN LARSON is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of
Kentucky, US. She is Senior Editor of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural
Studies and works at the intersections of Spatial Theory and Literary, Film and
Urban Studies.
Toward an Urban Cultural Studies: Henri Lefebvre and the Humanities
Benjamin Fraser
Poetics of Opposition in Contemporary Spain: Politics and the Work of Urban Culture
Jonathan Snyder
Ecuadorians in Madrid: Migrants’ Place in Urban History
Araceli Masterson-Algar
Ecuadorians in Madrid
Migrants’ Place in
Urban History
Araceli Masterson-Algar
ECUADORIANS IN MADRID
Copyright © Araceli Masterson-Algar 2016
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First published 2016 by
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137536075
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Masterson-Algar, Araceli.
Title: Ecuadorians in Madrid : migrants’ place in urban history / Araceli
Masterson-Algar.
Description: New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. | Series: Hispanic
urban studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015028057
Subjects: LCSH: Ecuadorians—Spain—Madrid—History—21st century. |
Immigrants—Spain—Madrid—History—21st century. |
Transnationalism—Social aspects—Spain—Madrid—History—21st century. |
Transnationalism—Social aspects—Ecuador—History—21st century. | Madrid
(Spain—Ethnic relations—History—21st century. | City and town
life—Spain—Madrid—History—21st century. | Madrid (Spain—Social life
and customs—History—21st century. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration &
Immigration. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / General. | SOCIAL SCIENCE
/ Sociology / Urban. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Regional Studies.
Classification: LCC DP358.3.E2 M37 2016 | DDC 305.868/86604641—dc23 LC
record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015028057
A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction 1
1 Ecuador in Madrid/Madrid in Ecuador: Transnational Dynamics
between Ecuador and Spain in the Twenty-First Century 21
2 Beginning of the Itinerary: Madrid’s Subway 47
3 First Stop, Lago : Lakes and Lacunaes in Madrid’s Parks 81
4 Second Stop, Nuevos Ministerios: Planning Madrid’s Nightlife 123
5 End of the Itinerary, Airport : Building Transnational R eal Estate 171
Afterword 203
Appendix: Additional Survey Results 207
Notes 225
Bibliography 247
Index 283
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Construction site of the future station “La Magdalena” 76
2.2 Construction site of the future station “Labrador” 76
2.3 “Que la lí nea 10 de metro llegue a Quito.” S í Se Puede 78
3.1 “Recuperemos Madrid” Leaflet by the group Democracia
Nacional 86
3.2 Private security watches over the hill/temple that oversees the
garden of E l Bosque de los Ausentes 97
3.3 Mural panels by Antonio Mingote (1987) 104
3.4 Family arriving at Lago 109
3.5 The parking when it becomes “Lago”. This Ecuadorian space
is removed from the services and restaurants that cater to
visitors along the lakeshore just some steps away 113
3.6 Banner with logo at the entry to the Parque Bicentenario 121
4.1 Images by H é ctor Villarreal (2006) 132
4.2 Same location as left image above, June 2010 133
4.3 Picasso tower above 144
4.4 Ecuatopia by El Perro. Artists Iv á n L ó pez and Pablo Espa ñ a
work currently under the name “Colectivo Democracia” 168
5.1 Advertisement money transfers 177
5.2 Advertisement Telef ó nica 178
5.3 Advertisement for the money transfer agency “Ecuagiros” 179
5.4 Advertisement Movistar 180
Table
1.1 Overview of survey respondents 38
Introduction
A
circle on the floor with the inscription “Ecuador-” is the meet-
ing place that a group of young Ecuadorian migrants made for
themselves in a public park in the residential neighborhood of
Vallecas, Madrid. It was the summer of 2004, and I was living in Madrid
with a family from Quito, who managed a bakery in that neighborhood.
Although I did not give the event much thought at the time, its memory
marked the beginning of the research that led to this book. 1 How was this
circle on the ground “Ecuadorian territory?” What were the meanings
conveyed in the youths’ demarcation of an Ecuadorian space in the park
of one of Madrid’s most “castizo” neighborhoods? In the chapters that
follow, I step inside this circle, not as a demarcation, but as the grounds
to see Madrid inside and out; to read Ecuador in the map of Vallecas, and
to reflect on how Madrid’s neighborhood comes into view via Ecuador.
Ecuadorians have been key actors in Madrid for over a decade,
affirming a place for themselves in the city and in the nation through
numerous forms of public expression. They have and are asserting their
rights to the city in a variety of ways, partly as a result of more than a
decade of collective organization and also in response to newly circulat-
ing discourses of citizenship both in Spain and Ecuador. Their uses and
(re)articulations of space in Madrid and the public response to these
practices open a window to better understand how the global dynamics
of capital play out c ulturally , and within the local.
Departing from the conviction that spatiality is essential to the qual-
ity of life and is a key component in asserting human rights and in the
forging of progressive city and transnational politics (Lefebvre 1991,
1996; Mitchell 2003; Massey 1994, 2000), the question that guides
the book is: How did Madrid’s Ecuadorian residents experience and
(re)make Madrid l ocally through transnational practices between 1998
and 2008? I set off to: (1) analyze how Ecuadorians’ different levels of
participation in Madrid’s urban spaces, and the municipality’s response
2 ● Ecuadorians in Madrid
to these practices, dialog with definitions of citizenship, with migrants’
place in Spain, and with Ecuador’s configurations of nationhood;
(2) show the interrelation between the material realities of Ecuadorian
migrants in Madrid, their access to space and cultural production (and
consumption), focusing on the historical specificity of postcolonial rela-
tions between Spain and Ecuador; (3) show how Ecuadorian migrants
have been actively engaged in the urban planning of Madrid, making
the city through local and transnational practices.
This book stems from a transnational urban and cultural studies
framework that points toward a more complex and intimate under-
standing of migration dynamics and of migrants who, with or without
papers, contribute to the making of their cities of residence at a vari-
ety of scales, through transnational practices that are locally grounded
(Smith 2001, 2002). 2 Because cities are not products waiting to be used,
but means and outcomes of social processes, Madrid’s inhabitants—all
of them—remake Madrid by the mere fact of conducting their every-
day lives in and through the city. The specific aim of this book is to
show how Ecuadorian migrants are subjects in the making of Madrid,
extending their transnational networks to Quito, Ecuador through their
lives in the locally grounded and historically specific places of Madrid,
Europe’s Ecuadorian capital.
Ecuadorian Migrations to Spain—Overview of Scholarship
La migración nos ha ofrecido a los artistas posibilidades infinitas. Es
un gran pretexto—digo un gran pretexto porque la migración no es
algo nuevo en la historia del Ecuador—para crear muchas posibilidades
de . . . como te diría, muchas formas de saber lo que pasa en el Ecuador
a través de estos grupos humanos que están acá. Aquí ves con más clari-
dad lo que pasa en el Ecuador porque simplemente se traslada aquí el
Ecuador. [Migration has offered artists infinite possibilities. It is a great
excuse—and I call it excuse because migration is not something new in
the history of Ecuador—to create many opportunities to . . . how should
I put it, many ways to know what is happening in Ecuador through the
human populations who are here. Here you can see with all clarity what
happens in Ecuador, simply because Ecuador moves here]. (Galo Urbina,
film director. Personal interview)
Ecuador’s recent history of migration is usually divided into pre-
and post-1998. 3 While the first period is described as a gradual devel-
opment since the 1950s, with most migrants departing from the poorer
rural areas of the Sierra (mainly Cañar and Azuay regions) to the United
