Falling through the Cracks: Anarchistic Resistance and the Generación perdida in José Ángel Mañas’s Historias del Kronen and Care Santos’s Okupada

Spain’s Generación X is better known for partying than protesting, restiveness than resistance, and popular prose than populist pamphlets. However, today’s youth, often dubbed the “Generación perdida,” project quite a different image of themselves. Growing frustration with systemic unemployment has eroded the apathy long associated with Spanish youth culture and sparked their indignation. This sentiment has been channeled into an anarchistic impulse to dismantle or overhaul the capitalist system and has led to a movement known as Movimiento 15-M for the massive protests that took place all across Spain on May 15, 2011. Various aspects of this movement are anticipated in the Gen X novels Historias del Kronen (1994) by José Ángel Mañas and Okupada (1997) by Care Santos, which offer different perspectives of anarchism in Spanish urban youth culture. The contrast between the treatments of anarchism in these novels provides a platform for fruitful discussion about the reconfiguration of the concept and practice of anarchism in contemporary Spain, the relationship between anarchism and individual autonomy, and the intersection of anarchism and utopia/dystopia in sociopolitical thought. Moreover, an analysis of the anarchistic appropriations of capitalist landscapes reflects the hierarchical relationships established in these novels.

Though the word anarchy has become synonymous with chaos, lawlessness and destruction in the vernacular, the notions of harmony and civilization form some of the founding principles of the sociopolitical movement of anarchism. According to Colin Ward, Peter Kropotkin (one of the first and strongest proponents of anarchism) defines it in the 1910 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica as:

the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government—harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements, concluded between various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.

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Etymologically, anarchism denotes the concept of a lack of a leader (Ward 1). Yet the absence of a political leader does not necessarily lead to chaos, as individuals can make arrangements and organize activities on an ad hoc basis. As such, the characteristic of anarchism that is fundamental to this study is the notion of impermanence.

Instead of establishing permanent institutions, social organizations or living spaces, individuals and small groups that adhere to anarchistic principles must be flexible enough to mold themselves to their environment and changing circumstances.¹ That anarchism often comes in waves does not minimize its profound impact, as evidenced by the anarchist uprisings during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), which were among the most overt and sustained manifestations of anarchism in European history.² Many Spanish anarchists affiliated themselves with the official organizations of Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), an anarcho-syndicalist association, and Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI). In contemporary Spain, some of the most dramatic manifestations of anarchism have come out of the anti-globalization movement, Movimiento 15-M, and other such protest movements.

Whereas Okupada anticipates the disillusionment and hope for a more equitable society that now drive Movimiento 15-M (also known as Movimiento de los Indignados or #SpanishRevolution), Historias captures the hedonism and apathy predominant among many post-Movida, pre-15-M youth.³ In Historias, the absence of restrictions on the characters’ behaviors gives the illusion of autonomy, yet they are merely pawns in a business-driven society and almost everything they do is directed by consumerism. Breaking free from the constraints of traditional Spanish society, the characters lead rebellious lifestyles of consumption, waste and excess prescribed to them by the media. Taking refuge in alternative music and movies, they engage in acts of destruction and/or self-destruction that challenge authority and social norms in a way that resembles anarchistic behavior, yet is merely anarchic in nature.⁴ Instead of subverting the power structure, they simply replicate the images of rebellion...