The street as a flag. Grammars, tropes and markers in the urban movements of the Cabanyal (Valencia, Spain)

Abstract

In this article, we analyse how urban movements occupy spaces of the city through their resignification, register their demands in the territory and provide places with content through powerful markers. From the case of the Cabanyal neighborhood (Valencia, Spain) we will expose how, over twenty years of resistance, the streets have become theaters of several representations and claims. The scenic changes and the struggles to conquer the landscape have transformed the movements into authentic stagehands of the neighborhood. Not to mention that the dispute over the Cabanyal led local political authorities to turn some areas into ghost sets or to mark their conquests explicitly. We will travel the streets to read the memories anchored in them and the struggles of urban movements to create their own meanings and neighborhood symbols.