Nelson Mandela Square: Spatialities in a Frontier

Abstract

This article presents the partial result of a broader research, carried out in the Lavapiés neighborhood, central Madrid, aimed at apprehending the constitution of its distinct spatialities and the meanings they generate in culture. The object of discussion hereby proposed is Nelson Mandela square, one of the main meeting points of immigrants in the region, in order to verify how the emergence of spatialities based on exchanges and tensions among the different groups spending time at the venue occurs. To this end, the analysis will be based on the ambivalence that characterizes the functioning of the semiotic frontier, as defined by the culture cultural semiotician Iuri Lotman (1996). The research method includes situationist drift and the participant observation. In the square, the presence of two distinct spatialities is noticed: one marked by a distancing resulting in relationships guided by what Richard Sennett (2018/2019) indicates as the “close-stranger” and another one characterized by translational exchanges by which a city is built differently from the one planned by urbanism. Through the discussion, it is also aimed to point out how, through the frontier, it becomes possible to apprehend forms of constitution of the pidgin city (Careri, 2016/2017), which emerges in the midst of relationships marked by unpredictability and error, resulting from the interactions established between different alterities.