Agenda

The Dream of Water Produces Monsters. Enlightenment, Hydraulic Capitalism, and Imaginaries of Power in Contemporary Spain
4 September 2025, 4.30 PM CEST
Aula Magna Silvio Trentin

Based on a comparative analysis with contributions from Italian environmental history, this presentation will explore the relationship between modernization processes and water imaginaries in contemporary Spain, taking as a case study the modern history of Manzanares river, located in the province of Madrid. It will do so by focusing on four specific moments.
First, the projects of the 18th-century court Enlightenment, with the proposal of a decentralized industrialization model that encouraged the establishment of small factories along the artificial canal waterways, promoting irrigated agriculture and the repopulation of inland Spain. Secondly, the modernizing industrial processes of liberal sign of the first half of the 19th century, which drove the privatization of land ownership through expropiation laws, trying to impose the logic of political economy on natural resources against the persistence of feudal social relations. Third, the imaginaries of nature of Regeneracionismo, deployed in the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, which insisted on fully harnessing the water reserves of national rivers so that public works, such as the construction of small hydroelectric plants, more efficient and economical than fossil energy, could drive plans promoting the production of a new nature, a new geography, and a new climate.
Fourth, the presentation will examine how Francoism reinterpreted these imaginaries through the construction of large reservoirs, first as part of its autarkic policies and later in its liberalization efforts. This approach followed a “political ecology” of water that bears many connections with the policies promoted by Italian fascism and the miracolo economico of the postwar period. Finally, the presentation will address proposals for a “new water culture” that have emerged as part of movements opposing the socio-environmental impacts of energy infrastructure development, shaping, both positively and negatively, current debates on the transition to renewable energy.

Jaime Vindel 
European PhD in Art History and Master in Philosophy and Social Sciences. Tenured Scientist of the Department of Art History and Heritage of the Institute of History of the Spanish National Research Council, where he has been or is Head Researcher of the projects: "Fossil Aesthetics: a political ecology of art history, visual culture and cultural imaginaries of modernity" (PIE, ref. 202010E005), “Energy humanities. Energy and sociocultural imaginaries between the industrial revolutions and the ecosocial crisis” (PID2020-113272RA-I00, ENERGEHUM) and “(Post)fossil culture: socio-cultural imaginaries, global warming and energy transition (KULTUR(P)FOSSIL, CNS2023-143774)”. He was coordinator of the "Cultural Ecologies" contents block of the Independent Studies Programme of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (2017-2018 and 2019-2020 editions) and is the author of books such as Cultura fósil. Arte, cultura y política entre la Revolución industrial y el calentamiento global (Akal, 2023) and Estética fósil. Imaginarios de la energía y crisis ecosocial (Arcadia, 2020). Currently, he is also a member of the “EULAC for Energy Transition research project. Energy Transition Cooperation in research infrastructures for energy transition between European and Latin American and Caribbean countries” HORIZON CSA-HORIZON (Coordination and Support Actions) 2022.

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