ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Dams, displacement and resettlement. The experience of local communities through non-academic sources

• In Event: Engineering Frontiers: Water, Expertise, and the Social Costs of Hydraulic Modernization

English Abstract

With more than 1,200 large dams (over 15m high), Spain is the European Union country with the largest number of these infrastructures, and the fifth largest in the world. However, there are no reliable data on the number of villages and towns flooded or the number of people displaced by the construction of these structures. In most cases, displaced people had to find a new place to live on their own. Only in some cases were villages built to resettle the displaced population, and often these villages did not meet the needs of the population.
Dam building has been accompanied by a triumphant modernising discourse based on the technoscientific control of water, which has minimised the social costs of these infrastructures. Reservoirs are environmental conflicts and sacrifice zones whose inhabitants lived a landscape loss and the deep impact of this loss in their identity. This paper will explore the displacement and resettlement experienced by local communities, as well as the resistance and negotiation they may engage in with hydroelectric companies and/or the state. The sources reviewed will include works of fiction and non-fiction, documentaries, songs and materials produced by social movements and collectives. Most of these materials have been produced in recent decades and have collected experiences that have been hidden and silenced by the hegemonic narratives about dam construction.

Author

• Judit Gil-Farrero, Università degli studi di Bergamo (UniBg)