Las batallas de Barcelona : Imaginarios culturales de una ciudad en disputa (1975-2025)

Is a city democratic if its own citizens cannot live there? This question permeates life in global cities, and Barcelona is a prime example of this dynamic that provokes a contemporary unease: the experience of dispossession. After half a century of profound transformation, Barcelona went from a provincial city to a reborn democratic capital during the Olympic Games, and from an admired project of social-democratic urban planning to a brand transformed into a commodity exploited by neoliberalism, which increasingly expels its citizens. Who does Barcelona belong to today? Jordi Amat reflects on these questions in a fascinating exercise of first-person cultural criticism that analyzes the disputes surrounding the city's image. The journey begins during the Transition period with the counterculture and the songs of Joan Manuel Serrat and culminates with the novels of discontent by Llucia Ramis and Andrea Genovart, after having passed through the trauma of the Catalan independence movement and the films of Almodóvar, Woody Allen, and El 47. In doing so, he identifies the discontents of the present and who profits from them. Because urban identity is at stake: this is Barcelona's great battle.