The Politics of Gendered Life Stories in Spain

This book examines how gendered life stories act as interventions that unsettle the boundaries between private experience and public life. From the testimonies of women whose accounts of gender violence have forced a reckoning with institutional silence, to the kiss-gate scandal in women’s football that reframed debates on consent and national identity, to Shakira’s widely circulated song about her public breakup, where questions of female authorship unfolded within the tightly managed economies of global pop celebrity, these stories reveal the shifting conditions under which lived experience acquires political force.
Set against Spain’s volatile political landscape—marked by feminist mobilisation, reactionary backlash, and struggles over the meaning of public testimony—this book offers a framework for understanding how personal narratives travel, gather force, and become sites where political and cultural boundaries are redrawn. It speaks to readers concerned with the mediated life of testimony and the historical conditions under which private lives come to matter publicly, in Spain and beyond.

Macarena Gordillo de Paz is a Lecturer in International Studies and Languages at the University of Technology Sydney. She is a cultural theorist who analyses how the evolution of Spanish national identity in the popular culture context has shaped Contemporary Spain, revealing the underlying historical narratives of gender and transnational politics. She also develops innovative approaches to teaching and learning through the embedding of cultural, international, and linguistic studies to create an engaging educational environment that inspires and supports students’ lifelong journey.
Nicholas Manganas is Senior Lecturer in International Studies and Global Societies at the University of Technology Sydney. He is a cultural theorist who examines how historical narratives persist as active forces in shaping the political, cultural, and affective life of the present. His work explores how the past is mobilised in contemporary contexts—sometimes to reinforce authority, sometimes to challenge it—across areas including crisis politics and collective memory. He is the author of Las dos Españas: Terror and Crisis in Contemporary Spain (2016) and Crisis Cultures: Narratives of Western Modernity in the Digital Age (2024).