“CHOLOS” AND “CHOLAS”. SUBURBAN YOUTH AND MARGINAL WAY OF LIFE IN BARCELONA.

 Jordi Nofre i Mateo, University of Barcelona, Spain

 During last years, some authors suggest that Barcelona can be considered as a semiperipherical global city. For that very reason, its ruling class bet to carry out several cultural strategies for urban renewal not only of its downtown but also its suburbs. The main goal of them is to strengthen the process of internationalization of the catalan capital. However, this urban renewal have recently involved a forced replacement of social practices in downtown and suburban areas. At the same time, urban transformations carried out by local public administration tends to lead some changes related to social practices, cultural consumption and daily time-spaces of suburban dwellers. This communication will be about a particular case of cultural resistances in suburbs of Barcelona as a reply to these transformations. In this sense, this communication claims to show the particular case of “cholos” and “cholas”, a specific group of young working class living in suburbs of catalan capital. They use to enhance, appropiate and transform gipsy ethics and aesthetics in order to (re)produce an alternative political and cultural discourse as a replying to the hegemonic political and cultural discourse reproduced by catalanist ruling class living at inner city. A geographical and cultural overview about this social phenomenon will allow to consider it as a struggle between social classes and, more specifically, between the way of life of new middle classes –living and consuming at inner city- and the way of life of suburban young working classes, that it use to be considered as marginal by new middle classes. In this sense, “cholos” and “cholas” have got politized positions that belongs to xenophobic Spanish natiolanism. This demand for specfic cultural products belongs to the fields of music, language, gastronomy, leisure, dress, shopping and use of public space. In this sense, it will emphasize the fact that exists a social and spatial segregation in Barcelona due to segregated cultural consumption that is differentiated by implicit political symbology being contained in cultural products. As the main open conclusion of this communication, it will suggest that these “subcultural” frictions can ben considered as a sign of political and cultural failure of modern catalanism in its social construction of Barcelona and Catalonia.