Critical approaches and the practice of geography in Spain

Abstract

One could be tempted to think that the political and social history of Spain over the past 40–45 years created a climate and context highly beneficial for the birth of critical thinking in the social sciences, including in human geography. However, we do not believe that this is the case. Today, Spanish geography still retains some of the features of the Vidalian tradition of regional geography (descriptive, uncritical, apolitical), although having developed in the last two decades a strong technical and applied component derived, above all, from the emergence of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Therefore, even if we can find some interest in critical thinking over the last three decades, such perspectives have always been – and remain – very marginal to the mainstream of Spanish geography. The reasons for this lack of critical geography – or, at least, of a steady trend of critical thinking – are complex. In order to analyse this issue, and to contribute with our own long experience within Spanish academia, we will in this chapter look at the development of critical perspectives within the general evolution of Spanish geography since the death of Franco in 1975, and we will pay particular attention to studies of gender as a way of doing critical geography.