Las aguas bajan negras (todavía): discurso tóxico y eco-ansiedad en la novela rural de la España contemporánea

Abstract

Abstract

This essay analyzes Luis Mario’s first novel Calabobos (2025) from the theoretical perspective of Lawrence Buell’s toxic discourse, as well as other theoretical proposals from the eco-criticism of Glenn A. Albrecht, Timothy Morton, and Sunaura Taylor to understand how the novel represents a rural landscape that functions not only as a backdrop for inserting the theme of the environmental crisis, but also as a metaphor for a toxic interpenetration that affects the environment, bodies, and narrative structures. The text, situated within a set of contemporary Spanish hydronarratives that denounce the devastation of waterscapes inserted in the rural environment, and share the same atmosphere of anxiety and uprooting, proposes an ethic of care that invites us to rethink the links between literature, affects, and ecological degradation from a sensibility that intertwines vulnerable bodies and deteriorated ecologies. The intellectual disability of Mariuca, the central character in the plot, the narrator's use of the Cantabrian dialect, as well as the rain, the “galerna”, and the appearance of legendary characters from the oral mythology of Cantabria propose a critical reflection on the relationship between identity, language, and (natural and cultural) landscape, highlighting the interdependence between social and environmental fractures and promoting a collective memory that resists the destructive forces of capitalism.