Poetry and the city in Los reales sitios (2022) by Juan de Salas

Abstract

Since the publication of Pablo García Casado's Las afueras (1997), there has been a prevailing tendency in Spanish poetry to make territory, occupied space and its variants, as well as the relationships that it is possible to establish and develop within it, a source of linguistic and epistemic reflection. The recent publication of Los reales sitios (2022) by the art historian Juan de Salas stands out as a singular piece within the corpus. The poet offers new ways of intimacy and assault in Madrid; that is, new forms of historical and emotional relationship with the city, as well as with its institutions and structures. Following the theoretical postulates of Henri Lefebvre, Martí Perán, and Sara Ahmed, among other contemporary thinkers interested in the relationship between humanity and materiality, the aim of this research is to reflect on cities that are looked at and seen, around affective relations with the other, and on relations between poetry and space within the framework of the latest Hispanic poetry To this end, we begin to outline of one of the most powerful poetic trends of recent decades, that which places the urban space at the centre of linguistic reflection, and propose that although it is no longer possible to speak of a generation, it is at least possible to speak of what Fernando Broncano called “epistemic fraternities”.