Urban Enactments

Abstract

The relational richness displayed in Almodovar’s 2006 ‘Volver’ could never be explained as the result of the urban form of Vallecas, the neighborhood on the outskirts of Madrid where its main character (Raimunda) lives. Raimunda’s urbanism overflows the limits of the city, expands into courtyards, kitchens, tupperwares, parties and cemeteries some of them located in places as distant to Madrid as Granátula de Calatrava, the tiny village where she was born. When seen in detailed, urban life is not the direct result of cities’ urban tissues, neither of the intentions that fueled the production of the architectures they contain. To talk of the urbanisms that in many cases make cities active, rich and exciting another way to account for the material production of daily life is needed. Basically one that avoids identifying the urban to that confined and originated by notions of the city where they are insistently seen as fixed patches on the land.

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