Article Title
"Soy tú. Soy él": African Immigration and Otherness in the Spanish Collective Conscience
Keywords
Iberia, global community, Spain, Latin America, fragmentation, immigration, sameness, otherness, Spanish culture, African immigrants, ethics, Mikel Azurmendi, Estampas del Ejido, Antonio Elorza, El País, Básel Ramsis, El otro lado: un acercamiento a Lavapiés, JoséLuis Guerín, En construcción, national identity
Abstract
The commonly heard statement "Spain is different" contains a series of contradictions, paradoxes, and questions concerning Iberia's place within the global community, a community that is itself deeply contradictory—more and more the same and yet more and more fragmented. Immigration highlights the sameness/otherness dichotomy in Spanish culture, and the situation of African immigrants has especially caused the Spanish national consciousness an ethical quandary. Here I examine four recent cultural representations of African immigration in Spain—two journalistic works: Mikel Azurmendi's Estampas del Ejido and Antonio Elorza's articles in El País; and two documentary films: Básel Ramsis's El otro lado: un acercamiento a Lavapiés and José Luis Guerín's En construcción in order to assess the ways in which Spaniards are projecting their sense of national identity in the face of large-scale immigration, a most revealing mirror.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Ugarte, Michael
(2006)
""Soy tú. Soy él": African Immigration and Otherness in the Spanish Collective Conscience,"
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature:
Vol. 30:
Iss.
1, Article 10.
https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1620
