In Gopegui’s El padre de Blancanieves, an Ecuadorian immigrant prompts a middle-aged women’s evaluation of her ethical obligation to the other while her twenty year-old daughter questions the capitalist system that has provided her middle-class comforts and dedicates herself to seeking solutions to mitigate human activity’s negative impact on the environment. Rosa Montero’s Instrucciones para salvar el mundo explores migration from multiple angles, including immigration, disease, atomic matter, and virtual communities. While environmental concerns do not take center stage, continual references to climate change link the individual to an ethical responsibility not only to each other, but also to the environment’s future. All three novels take place in Madrid, Spain, yet Montero’s Lágrimas en la lluvia moves us into the future, to 2109, when contaminated natural resources, cloning, and teleportation for interplanetary travel contribute to new social hierarchies, existential crises, and heightened xenophobia.
Through looking at the confluence of migration and ecological issues as well as the roles of women in these novels, I will examine how these contemporary Spanish novelists envision Spain and Europe’s future and women’s place in it, and their proposals for creating sustainable community.
