McRackin
Super Moderator
Article appeared on DDI last saturday. I would translate gentuza as scum, not riffraff, but you get the idea:
In her column "Cannon Fodder," Emilia Landaluce coined a new term last weekend: gentuzification. I suppose she didn't replace the z with a c, which would be appropriate, to emphasize that this version of gentrification has the riffraff as its protagonist. If gentrification is, according to the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy of Spanish Language), "the process of renewal of an urban area, generally working-class or run-down, which involves the displacement of its original population by another with greater purchasing power," gentuzification, I imagine (Landaluce doesn't explain it, but it's intuited), must be the same process, but championed by the riffraff. At its core, it's the same thing, at least in Ibiza, where one could say that gentrification and gentuzification have overlapped to such an extent that they are almost unmistakable phenomena: in large numbers, these are people with greater purchasing power and, at the same time, riffraff, that "group or type of people who are considered despicable," according to the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy). And why are they despicable? That, of course, depends on each person's values. Personally, I include in this group those who cruise the streets of Vila in a Lamborghini Urus at high speeds; those who take over the housing stock (expelling residents) with a heel strike without a guilty conscience; to those who fail to include on their restaurant menus how much their exotic delicacies cost (thus concealing the fact that, for example, you have to pay more than 200 euros for a steak from a cow raised in the Antipodes, although it's well known that in certain posh environments it's in bad taste to ask about prices); to those who, despite the lack of water, build villas with Olympic-sized swimming pools and lawned gardens (as if this were Wales); and even to those who create associations that ostensibly pursue the good of Ibiza but are nothing more than private clubs presided over by idle rich people, businessmen defending their interests, and upstart snobs. If the end of the legendary Embassy in Madrid inspired Landaluce, induced by nostalgia, to invent that word, what would this sharp writer and journalist not come up with in this unhinged Ibiza?
In her column "Cannon Fodder," Emilia Landaluce coined a new term last weekend: gentuzification. I suppose she didn't replace the z with a c, which would be appropriate, to emphasize that this version of gentrification has the riffraff as its protagonist. If gentrification is, according to the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy of Spanish Language), "the process of renewal of an urban area, generally working-class or run-down, which involves the displacement of its original population by another with greater purchasing power," gentuzification, I imagine (Landaluce doesn't explain it, but it's intuited), must be the same process, but championed by the riffraff. At its core, it's the same thing, at least in Ibiza, where one could say that gentrification and gentuzification have overlapped to such an extent that they are almost unmistakable phenomena: in large numbers, these are people with greater purchasing power and, at the same time, riffraff, that "group or type of people who are considered despicable," according to the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy). And why are they despicable? That, of course, depends on each person's values. Personally, I include in this group those who cruise the streets of Vila in a Lamborghini Urus at high speeds; those who take over the housing stock (expelling residents) with a heel strike without a guilty conscience; to those who fail to include on their restaurant menus how much their exotic delicacies cost (thus concealing the fact that, for example, you have to pay more than 200 euros for a steak from a cow raised in the Antipodes, although it's well known that in certain posh environments it's in bad taste to ask about prices); to those who, despite the lack of water, build villas with Olympic-sized swimming pools and lawned gardens (as if this were Wales); and even to those who create associations that ostensibly pursue the good of Ibiza but are nothing more than private clubs presided over by idle rich people, businessmen defending their interests, and upstart snobs. If the end of the legendary Embassy in Madrid inspired Landaluce, induced by nostalgia, to invent that word, what would this sharp writer and journalist not come up with in this unhinged Ibiza?
