Gentrification Vernacular in Malasaña, Madrid

Abstract

In Spain, gentrification is no longer an academic term. It has become a popular, widely used concept. This paper focuses on the vernacular uses of the word gentrification in Malasaña, a gentrifying neighborhood located in the central district of Madrid. Malasaña has experienced major changes during the last few decades: from a derelict neighborhood having lost the university and the main industries; a fighting space for alternative democratic political and artistic movements against Franco’s dictatorship; a locale of the Movida (the Madrilenian Scene of the Eighties); a “drug infested” neighborhood in the Nineties; to a flourishing peculiar urban village reconfigured by the new microcultures of alternative groups, creative classes, hipsters, visiting suburbanites, and tourists. The aim of this chapter is demonstrating how the vernacular use of the word gentrification helps us to both understand what is going on in the neighborhood and getting a more nuanced understanding of gentrification as an urban transformation process.