Videosurveillance in the center of Madrid: moving towards an electronic panopticon?

Abstract

In the downtown of Madrid there are currently 147 CCTV cameras controlled by the Municipal Police, forming an entire control mesh digitalized through which the look of power is imposed as a standard element in order to produce safety spaces. Far from being a declining reality, this is presented with increasing frequency as a "necessity", and thus, the mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, has asked to the Government Delegation for installing 46 surveillance cameras more, in order to create "a large shopping and leisure environment covered with closed circuit television, an "ambitious security plan for shopping tourism". One of the central areas where they are concentrated is the neighborhood of Lavapies, where a total of 48 cameras to "fight crime and increase the sense of security" are installed. The discourses who try to legitimize the process of mass implementation of video surveillance in public space usually refer to "security reasons", and "improving the quality of life for residents and visitors". But ... what safety and quality of life are we talking about? Who and how are you protecting? Is it really an effective system of crime control? Try to answer these questions and allude to some resistance movements that have emerged against this process of implementation of urban electronic panopticon in order to question critically the discourses of safety is the objective of this article.