Acceso usuarios
Diana Aramburu
Using the medium of the crime fiction short story and focalized through Inspector Mauricio Tedesco, Empar Fernández’s “Rojo infierno” (2016), “Triscaidecafobia” (2016), and “El barri número 9” (2017) represent the immigration and the gender violence crises in Spain by chronicling the delinquency of ordinary citizens in a fictional format. Rooted in the gray asphalt of Barcelona’s neighborhoods that are still suffering the repercussions of 2008, Fernández’s stories give visibility to a crisis of parenthood, and take us to the peripheral spaces where these crises have unfolded. In “Rojo infierno” and “El barrio número 9,” the focus is on immigrant parents and crimes that are committed in fear of having to leave Spain, whereas, in “Triscaidecafobia,” a mother’s mistreatment at the hands of her son is depicted. Spatiality, vulnerability, and visibility are intimately linked in these stories as the spaces of delinquency and crime are (re)explored in this alternate “gris asfalto” formula, a term coined by Fernández in a 2016 article. Through Tedesco’s investigation of these crimes, the stories problematize what constitutes delinquency in an era of crisis and heightened vulnerabilities and how the boundaries between the criminal and the non-criminal have become blurred.
