From the Panopticon to the Labyrinth in Post-Franco Madrid: The Everyday Urban Imaginaries of Jesús Ibáñez

This essay examines the spatial turn in the post-Franco publications of Jesús Ibáñez Alonso (1928–1992). It starts by recounting three inflection points along the life trajectory of this renowned Spanish sociologist. The first has to do with his brief stint in one of the most notorious symbols of Francoist repression, la cárcel de Carabanchel.The second involves the decade or so that Ibáñez spent conducting market research into consumer goods. The third takes up the movement of social protest that Ibáñez organized against the construction of Madrid’s first American-style shopping mall, La Vaguada. The final section unfolds against the historical backdrop of Spain’s Transition (1975–1982) and early democratic periods (1982–1996). Through close readings of written texts and urban space, the ultimate aim here is to show how Ibáñez discovered the emergent socio-spatial surveillance apparatus that financial capital used from the 1970s to reconfigure its global accumulation circuitries: the labyrinth.