The Sobremesa Podcast

Semana Santa is is one of the most important holidays of the year in Spain, with the main focus being on the popular processions organized by religious brotherhoods, or cofradías. Today on Sobremesa Podcast Alan and Eoghan are joined by the anthropologist Carlos Cañete to talk about both the oppressive and emancipatory sides of Semana Santa as a religious and cultural institution.

Carlos is a tenured researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and was the Edward Said fellow at Columbia University from 2020-2022.

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In this episode of The Sobremesa Podcast, Alan speaks with Alberto Corsín Jiménez, anthropologist and author of Free Culture and the City: Hackers, Commoners, and Neighbors in Madrid, 1997–2017. They explore how the principles of free software, Creative Commons, and hacker culture shaped Madrid’s urban activism—especially in the lead-up to and aftermath of the 15M movement. From the Pardo Media Lab to the reimagining of public space as an open and shared resource, this conversation looks at how free culture became a political and spatial experiment.

What does it mean to claim a free city in an era where everything comes with a price tag? And what lessons can we take from these movements as digital and urban space become increasingly privatized? Tune in for a deep dive into the intersection of technology, activism, and urban commons.

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Spain’s housing crisis has returned, but unlike 2008, there’s no financial collapse—just rising rents, increasing evictions, and a housing market that feels out of reach for many. What’s driving this crisis, and what can be done to address it?

In this episode of The Sobremesa Podcast, Alan speaks with Dr. Koldo Casla, a Senior Lecturer in International Human Rights Law at Essex Law School, to explore the roots of Spain’s housing problems. They discuss how the current crisis differs from 2008, the impact of policy and speculation, and whether housing should be recognised as a fundamental social right.

A crucial conversation on one of Spain’s most urgent issues.

If you enjoy the podcast and want to help cover production costs, consider buying us a coffee. Your support helps keep these conversations going. Every contribution makes a difference!

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Image used under Creative Commons, author Barcex

Last weekend saw the European far-right once again converge on Madrid as Vox hosted a summit of party leaders from the European Patriots group. Already acting as an active lobby for Musk in the EU parliament to ensure there is no regulation of social media, the far-right grouping are jubilant at their prospects for the next 4 years after the election of Trump.

That Vox’s Santiago Abascal was named president of the Patriots’ grouping last year was further evidence of how the Spanish far-right tend to punch above their electoral weight on the international stage. To discuss last Saturday’s event and Vox’s place within the global far-right, I am joined by Connor Mulhern. Connor is a campaign strategist and the lead researcher at the ‘Reactionary International’ investigative project - an initiative from the Progressive International to map out how the far-right operates globally.

You can find the project's published work here: https://reactionary.international/

And join its Telegram group here: https://t.me/reactionaryinternational

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This week writer and tour guide Nick Lloyd brings Catherine on a a more atypical historical route of Barcelona to uncover the lesser known layers to the city’s history.

They start at Estació de França, a historic train station not far from the city’s port where the International Brigades arrived to Spain. They then walk down to Ciutadella Park, where Barcelona’s zoo is located to discuss the haunting effects the war had on the animals and the origins of the park. They finish at Pompeu Fabra University, a building that still bears the scars of fascist bombings and which was known during the Civil War as the Karl Marx Barracks.

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This week Eoghan talks to author and journalist Dan Hancox about his new book 'Multitudes: How Crowds Made The Modern World’. It is a fascinating exploration of the collective joy and emancipatory  potential of different forms of mass gatherings while also tracing the obsession of elites and the forces of law and order in policing, delegitimizing and suppressing crowds.

Throughout Multitudes Dan returns to examples of the exuberance and potency of Spanish crowds - from Cadiz Carnaval to the 2012 general strike in Madrid.

It has been a year of near constant parliamentary deadlock for Spain's left-leaning government but also one of strong economic growth in comparison to other eurozone economies. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialist Party won the Catalan elections in May and were once again the largest social democratic force in Europe after June's European parliament elections. Yet Sanchez and PSOE have also be subject to a long string of judicial investigations - most of which seem politically motivated.

Yet beyond the headlines of these cases, and with the government’s legislative agenda largely blocked, the country’s acute housing crisis and the difficult clean up operation after the floods in Valencia are both ongoing in the background.

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This week Eoghan talks to the author and journalist Michael Eaude. Michael is the author nine books, including ‘Catalonia, a Cultural History’, ‘Triumph at Midnight of the Century - A Critical Biography of Arturo Barea’ and ‘Sails and Winds - A Cultural History of Valencia’.

And during the last 25 years he has also worked as a self-described "necrologist",  writing some 70 obituaries for The Guardian on leading cultural and political figures from Spain’s 20th century.

He as now just published his first novel - ‘The Bones in the Forest’ - available from Clapton Press. As with his celebrated non-fiction work, the novel deals with Spain’s reckoning with its recent past and the country’s cultural and historic fault lines as the action jumps back and forth between the revolutionary 1930s and then the early 2000s. 

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130,000 people protested in Valencia last Saturday demanding regional premier Carlos Mazón resign from his post for his disastrous management of the floods which devastated the area two weeks ago. The death toll stands at 223 people while hundreds of thousands of others have had their homes and places of work gutted.

Eoghan spoke to journalist Leah Pattem about the protests and the ongoing recovery and clean up operations in Valencia. Leah is the founder of https://madridnofrills.com/