Capital sur by Eduardo Del Campo (review)

In the face of global recessions, high inflation, political unrest, and new perspectives on the Other in our modern society, Capital sur hits home as an engaging and globally relevant piece of fiction. For anyone interested in modern or twenty-first-century Spanish culture, society, identity, literature, art, and so forth, del Campo writes a novel that depicts the problems and impacts of the deep recession in Seville, Spain in the 1990s. Capital sur is at once a critique of high society, a discussion of clashing perspectives during globalization, and an engaging story with both robust characters worthy of discussion and more stylized characters that typify the various social classes.

As a piece of fiction, the value of Capital sur lies in the plot and compilation of characters that lend themselves to a variety of readers who will discover a text that is both provocative and entertaining. Taking place in the mid 1990s, the novel follows the actions, perspectives and frustrations of several people representing diverse socioeconomic and educational backgrounds in Seville, Spain. Each of them exhibits unique methods of coping with the devastating recession in which they live, allowing the depth of each character to emerge as they confront related pressures while working through their own personal problems. Shifts in focalization give detailed insights into each of the characters, but the subtle, abrupt, or untagged nature of these shifts also forces the reader to decipher the context clues. For example, Diego, a journalist, investigates and reports on various situations, thus depicting many of the problems in Seville during the recession. While struggling with his own potential unemployment and desires for a house and a stable future, Diego documents Salvador, a drug addict, who is released from prison in order to die with his family. Diego chronicles Salvador’s rapid physical decline because of both AIDS and the effects of his lingering addiction. Del Campo also uses Diego’s perspective to construct, through friends, examples of victims of the social crisis: from the unemployed and uneducated to the idealistic yet hopeless university student, all who face the effects of a dead economy.

In Diego’s travels, as well as in the adventures of other characters, del Campo questions many of society’s norms and perspectives as Spain prepares for the twenty first century. For example, in Diego’s portrayal of Salvador, rather than criminalizing an inmate and marginalizing an addict, he paints a struggling soul through sympathy and empathy, allowing both the fictional reader and the real reader a connection with the other’s desires, emotions, and regrets. This makes Salvador a tragic hero, the Other with whom the readers must connect, as Diego would argue. Another, much like Salvador, is Antonia, a prostitute, who, rather than living alienated because of a moral laxity, turns her practice into a viable profession. Carrying an illegitimate child, she escapes the ridicule of her conservative community twenty years before the events in Capital sur begin by abandoning her baby and walking into the streets of Seville. She learns to recognize when and where to advertise her services in order to increase her clientele, which, when combined with an understanding of trends of supply, demand, and competition, has allowed her to maximize profits. In the depths of a devastating recession, Antonia can claim more financial stability than some of the others who must sell themselves to other demoralizing jobs to merely make ends meet (such as an art school model, dispersing useless pamphlets to uninterested people, or other dehumanizing and dangerous lines work). This sort of irony about alternative economies permeates the novel and casts a tragic air, forcing both characters and readers to question acceptable social values and practices, especially as the upper and mid to lower classes clash at various points throughout the novel. Del Campo includes an international critique through a subplot in which a moviemaker from the United States plans to use the city for a scene in an upcoming film. Promising quick and easy money for locals as...