Boats, Bodies, and Borders: Migration, Dispossession, and Patera Literature in Spain

• Autores: N.Michelle Murray
• Localización: The Routledge Hispanic studies companion to twentieth and twenty-first century Spain: ideas, practices, imaginings / coord. por Eduardo Ledesma, Luisa Elena Delgado, 2025, ISBN 978-1-032-96468-3, págs. 342-354
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This chapter explores patera literature through three understudied novels: Cristina Cerezales Laforet’s Ulises y Yacir (Ulises and Yacir; 2016), Miguel Angel Díaz Palarea’s La patera verde (The Green Patera; 2003), and Fernando Lalana’s El paso del estrecho (The Strait Passage; 2005). The author asserts that the symbolic significance of the patera is rooted in its representation of dispossession. While dispossession usually refers to the loss of property, the term is used here to describe far more profound, personal losses brought about by clandestine migration to an area hostile to undocumented foreign workers. The loss of the former homeland is the first dispossession that migrants endure. Next, migrants face the loss of rights, the loss of safety, and, to a certain extent, the loss of personal autonomy insofar as they lose the right to define themselves once they enter their destination. The patera symbolizes these deprivations and risks, specifically, the clandestine travel of those who lack what the state deems appropriate documentation, the lack of safe passage in a seafaring vessel, and the loss of life – the ultimate sacrifice some migrants make in an effort to improve their conditions.