Searching the Soul of the City in Rafael Chirbes’s Crematorio

Abstract

García-Donoso argues that Rafael Chirbes’s Crematorio (2007) offers a unique opportunity to approach the proliferation of discourses on the sacred, religion, and non-rational dynamics in a critique of the relationship between modernity, urbanization, and capitalization. The author explores how the emergence of a new ontology of hybrid spaces, located at the intersection of agriculture-based rural areas and contemporary capitals of transient entertainment, defies traditional understandings of national, urban, and local communities. The history of transnational capitalism, political maneuverings, and human corruption in these new urban configurations informs a pervasive profanation of the city as a repository of transcendence for the social fabric. Crematorio invites readers to delve into urban memory and exhume a secret architecture built upon an unresolved tension between sacred and profane elements.