Genocide Project

Based on the document “España de mierda” by Albert Pla, here is a summary of its sections:

• Section I: Tito, a cynical manager from Madrid, and Julián, a Galician punk singer, show Raúl Gadea, a young Uruguayan singer, the sights of Santiago de Compostela. They mock the local cathedral and express strong anti-religious and anti-monarchical sentiments while debating the existence of Jesus.
• Section II: Raúl performs his first concert in Spain at a rundown club called “Sala Francisco Franco”. Despite technical issues and feeling physically ill from overeating local tapas, his performance is a massive success with the audience.
• Section III: Unable to sleep, Raúl reflects on his family history, specifically his ancestor Jorge Gadea, who fled Italy in 1510 to escape the “tyrannical” and “murderous” Leonardo da Vinci. The narrative describes Da Vinci as a reckless inventor whose experiments caused the deaths of numerous Gadea family members.
• Section IV: During a business lunch, Tito presents Raúl with a financial breakdown of the first concert, showing how nearly all the revenue was consumed by taxes, commissions, and expenses. Tito’s history as a manager is revealed, marked by a series of artists who died of drug overdoses.
• Section V: While driving toward León, Tito and Raúl encounter an overwhelming mass of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago. The pilgrims eventually swarm over their car, crushing it under their weight; Tito narrowly saves Raúl before the vehicle is completely destroyed.
• Section VI: Stranded, they seek refuge at a “palloza” (a traditional stone house) owned by an old contact. They witness a magic show by Juan Tamariz, while Tito indulges in drugs and alcohol in the bathroom with various locals. They learn that their next concert in León is canceled due to a botched terrorist attack by a local separatist group.
• Section VII: In Salamanca, they struggle with extreme bureaucracy to find sound equipment at the university. After a performance delayed by local folklore acts, Raúl dines with the University Rector, who mistakenly believes he has hired the famous singer Jorge Drexler.
• Section VIII: The story details the surreal disappearance of singer Andrés Calamaro, who discovered he could only breathe underwater and eventually swam away into the sea to live with fish.
• Section IX: This section details Raúl’s upbringing in Uruguay and Brazil, his nomad childhood with his parents, and the diverse, eccentric origins of his many ancestors across the globe.
• Section X: In Madrid, Raúl meets Tito’s mother, Antonia, who takes him to the Prado Museum. Inside, the once-sweet Antonia becomes possessed by rage, screaming insults at the “genocidal” figures in the paintings and the museum’s lack of color until security intervenes.
• Section XI: After a concert in Madrid, Raúl is overwhelmed by superficial industry figures and “important” people who all have hyphenated, pretentious names. Exhausted, he returns to his hotel as the buildings and monuments of the city begin to speak to him, arguing over their own importance.
• Section XII: Tito and a promoter named Manuel Quijano de las Heras spend an entire day drinking and eating across Madrid to discuss a European tour. By the end of the night, they are so intoxicated they cannot remember if a deal was actually made.
• Section XIII: A global event occurs where extraterrestrials from “Planet E-X2” replace Earth’s ancient monuments, like the pyramids, with microchips. This news devastates Tito, who reveals his childhood obsession with Egypt and how he abandoned his dream of being an Egyptologist after meeting a girl named Bibiana at the pyramids.
• Section XIV: In Gijón, the narrative describes the corrupt local politics of Leopoldo, the Councillor of Culture, who views the arts solely as a way to siphon public funds into his own businesses. He attends Raúl’s concert but spends the time calculating the monetary value of the audience’s clothing and accessories.
• Section XV: Tito and Raúl travel through Cantabria, stopping in San Vicente de la Barquera. Tito rants about the local culture and eats excessively while Raúl feels increasingly alienated by the atmosphere of the tourist-heavy port.
• Section XVI: As they enter the Basque Country, Tito is confused by the bilingual signs while Raúl feels a connection to the region through the music he grew up with. Tito stops to buy drugs from a local contact.
• Section XVII: Bilbao is consumed by a chaotic, “eternal” series of overlapping protests and violent police charges. Tito and Raúl are swept up in the masses, fleeing through various cities until they find a “gap” in the protest and escape to Logroño.
• Section XVIII: They enter a plague-stricken Catalonia where a virus created by a scientist named Isaak Westinhouse is killing anyone who speaks Catalan. They meet musician Quimi Portet, who has taken a vow of silence in a cave on Montserrat to survive.
• Section XIX: Quimi explains his lifelong relationship with illness and leads them through a secret tunnel to the coast. On a deserted beach near a nuclear plant, Raúl contemplates canceling the tour as the sea washes up hundreds of corpses.
• Section XX: Traveling through the Valencian Community, they find the region in ruins. The city of Castellón has been demolished for a theoretical thermal pool, and Valencia has been replaced by a gargantuan statue of its president.
• Section XXI: They get lost in the orchards of Murcia and share a simple, high-quality meal with an old man whose beard grows at an impossible speed.
• Section XXII: Raúl spends a surreal, idyllic day and night in a forest, making love to a continuous succession of different women who appear from the trees. He returns to the hut to find Tito has been sleeping on the old man’s massive beard for an entire day.
• Section XXIII: On the drive back to Madrid, the landscape and climate change rapidly and erratically. Tito delivers a long, uninterrupted monologue on the history of Spanish politics and the corruption of its leaders while Raúl watches a hypnotic blur of roundabouts.
• Section XXIV: The text describes a corrupt “sculptor of roundabouts” who built a business empire by installing thousands of useless monuments across Spain’s roads. Tito and Raúl pass “fields of the unemployed,” where the government “plants” jobless people in barracks.
• Section XXV: During a second concert in Madrid, a bomb explodes in the club. Raúl, Tito, and singer Javier Krahe fall through a hole in the floor into a subterranean tunnel system. They discover a secret heretical library, encounter living skeletons, and eventually escape back to the surface using a magic potion from Tamariz.
• Section XXVI: With Spain in total collapse, they board a crowded, out-of-control train to Seville. The driver, who is a donkey, dies, and a passenger’s dog is forced to take over and drive the train safely to the station.
• Section XXVII: In Seville, a series of accidental deaths involving a local crime clan sparks a massive, city-wide gang war. Tito and Raúl drive through the carnage in a rental car, completely oblivious to the explosions and gunfights around them because they are listening to Kiko Veneno at full volume.
• Section XXVIII: After stopping the car, they wake up to find they—and the rest of the world—have slept for an entire year due to a magical curse involving “the princess of cockroaches”.
• Section XXIX: They encounter a group in the woods and consume ayahuasca. Tito has a profound spiritual experience, seeing his deceased former artists, while Raúl remains grounded. Their car is stolen by a desperate family, leaving them to walk to Jerez.
• Section XXX: In a desperate Algeciras, people are fighting to board boats to Africa. Tito and Raúl are caught in various accidents and end up in a ravine full of corpses before reaching the border.
• Section XXXI: At the border fence, Raúl meets a young girl wearing a red clown nose.
• Section XXXII: The girl’s family, Argentine artists, were abandoned by the government after a political dispute. Following a tip from a clown named Tortell Poltrona, the group puts on red noses; the police, seemingly unable to “see” them or treat them with violence while they are wearing the noses, allow them to pass to the boats. The family is rescued at sea, but the boat carrying Tito and Raúl sinks. Tito is never found, and Raúl’s body eventually washes up on his home beach in Uruguay.

España de mierda by Albert Pla is a surrealist “on the road” novel that follows Raúl Gadea, a young Uruguayan singer, and his cynical manager, Tito, on a chaotic concert tour across Spain. The book serves as a satirical and often cruel critique of Spanish society, culture, and politics, blending historical reimagining with contemporary disillusionment.

Thematic Analysis

• Critique of Spanish Institutions and Identity:
  • The Church and Monarchy: From the opening pages, the characters express deep-seated resentment toward the Catholic Church and the Bourbon monarchy, viewing them as historical oppressors who have “done more damage to this country” than anything else.
  • Bureaucracy and Corruption: The novel portrays Spanish institutions—such as the University of Salamanca and local municipal governments—as drowning in layers of useless bureaucracy. Local politicians, like the Councillor of Culture in Gijón, are depicted as purely transactional figures who use public funds for personal gain.
  • National Decay: As the tour progresses, Spain literally and figuratively falls apart. Monuments disappear, cities like Castellón are demolished for unbuilt projects, and Valencia is replaced by a giant statue of its own president.
• Surrealism and the “On the Road” Format:
  • Anachronistic History: The book reimagines historical figures through a dark lens. Leonardo da Vinci is portrayed as a “murderous” inventor whose experiments killed Raúl’s ancestors, while Spanish explorers like Juan Díaz de Solís are depicted as incompetent and “disgusting”.
  • The Absurdity of the Music Industry: Raúl’s journey highlights the exploitation of artists. After a successful show, Tito’s financial breakdown shows that taxes and commissions leave the artist with essentially nothing. Tito’s own history is a grim list of artists who died of drug overdoses under his management.
  • Magical Realism: The narrative frequently shifts into the impossible, such as Andrés Calamaro becoming an aquatic being, a dog driving a high-speed train, or the protagonists stumbling into a secret heretical library beneath Madrid inhabited by living skeletons.
• Social and Political Unrest:
  • The “Eternal” Protest: In the Basque Country, the characters are swept into a chaotic, never-ending series of protests and police charges, suggesting a society in a permanent state of conflict.
  • Linguistic Conflict: The novel satirizes Spain’s linguistic tensions, notably through a fictional plague in Catalonia where speaking Catalan becomes a fatal condition, forcing survivors into a vow of silence.

Narrative Style and Tone

• Cynicism and Nihilism: The tone is characterized by Tito’s “I’ve had it with everything” attitude. Everything from the Santiago Cathedral to the local beer is dismissed as “mierda” (crap).
• Contrast of Perspectives: The story relies on the contrast between Raúl’s innocent, repetitive observation that things are “very big” and Tito’s aggressive, world-weary monologues.
• Tragic Ending: The novel concludes with the total collapse of the country. While some escape to Africa, Tito is lost at sea and Raúl dies, his body washing up on the same Uruguayan beach where he grew up—symbolizing the ultimate failure of the “conquest” of Europe.