Metapolis | Paula Medina García

The Salt Mountain: A Landscape Action

Aug, 2026 | Julia Grosinger

Julia GrosingerSituating When travelling from Barcelona into inland Catalonia along the C16 highway, one cannot help but notice an utterly surrealist landscape element appearing in the left window. An oversized, white-shining mountain suddenly towers over the otherwise coherent view of reddish, seemingly abandoned crops, covered by Mediterranean shrubs and forest, interspersed with more or less ancient pine stands. This white-bright unexpectedness recalls less a natural formation, and more an...

Research as Resistance: Antiracist Counternarratives and Transformative Action

Jul, 2026 | Zenia Hellgren

Zenia HellgrenIn an era characterised by growing political polarisation and the increasing presence of far-right, populist, and xenophobic movements, it is becoming ever more evident that academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. Recent developments in the United States, including the exclusion of research within the “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) framework from national funding schemes, illustrate how political pressures can shape the boundaries of legitimate academic inquiry...

Frontlines of Resistance: At the Edges of a Burning World

Jun, 2026 | Irene López, Zaid Jaloudi

Zaid Jaloudi | Irene LópezThere are moments in history when the pace of events outstrips the language available to describe them. We are living inside one of those moments. By the time this volume reaches its readers, the world will have shifted again—another border crossed, another city besieged, another community displaced, another government bending the knee to forces it once dressed up as order. And yet something else is also happening, something that this issue of Metapolis has set out to...

Trenches of Hope: Ecotopias in an Upside-Down World

Jun, 2026 | Eva Saldaña Buenache

Eva Saldaña BuenacheThis could be the headline of our times: The geopolitics of fear and fossil colonialism as drivers of contemporary barbarism. Halfway through 2026, we can see that the 21st century is haemorrhaging due to structural extractive violence. The global map has been aggressively redrawn under the banner of what we might call “fossil colonialism”. The Trump administration, in the name of so-called energy security, is cementing expansionism and military interference. This...

Arab Existentialism in the Face of Regional Rivalries

May, 2026 | Zeidon Alkinani

Zeidon AlkinaniRethinking the Arab Strategic Framework and the Rise of Non-Arab Power Competition in the Post-American Middle East. Introduction: The End of the American Ordering Principle The regional architecture of the Middle East was constructed on a foundational premise: that US primacy would function as the structural guarantor of stability among otherwise competing and fragile states. From the Carter Doctrine to the Gulf War coalition, from Operation Iraqi Freedom to the Abraham...

Rebuilding the Nation-Dam in the Face of Radicalised Imperialism: Challenges from Venezuela

Apr, 2026 | Lorena Fréitez Mendoza

Lorena Fréitez MendozaI maintain that imperialism can only advance over a nation that has broken down as a political community. History is clear, and so is the classical theory of imperialism [1].[1] Hobson, John A. El imperialismo: un estudio [Imperialism: a Case Study]. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1981; Lenin, Vladimir Ilich. El imperialismo, fase superior del capitalismo [Imperialism: the Advanced Stage of Capitalism]. Madrid: Akal, 2014; Arrighi, Giovanni. El largo siglo XX: dinero, poder y...

Stubborn Compassion: A New Canadian Independence

Mar, 2026 | John Ralston Saul

John Ralston SaulWe all know what compassion means. But like most things that we believe we know, it's worth going back to think it over again. To continually remind ourselves that compassion is not pity. It's not just empathy. It contains empathy. It is not, certainly not, just sympathy. It's far away from sympathy because it includes action. It requires action. To put this in the simplest possible way, compassion is action in order to make things better. It’s the very hard work of...

Germany and the Holocaust: the Weaponisation of Memory

Feb, 2026 | Jaume Asens

Jaume AsensFor decades, our views on Israel and Palestine have been filtered through history's ghosts: the Holocaust, European anti-Semitism, guilt and redemption. This article does not seek to recount the history of a distant conflict by reciting dates and battles; rather, it seeks to examine the ethical and political frameworks that allow a state project born of European trauma to become a force of dispossession and oblivion for another people. Here, genealogies, memories and political...

The People Who Became a River: The Struggle for the Commons in Ecuador

Jan, 2026 | Ana María Larrea

Ana María LarreaIn an increasingly turbulent world, where the hegemonic power imposes its individualistic values and denies even the existence of climate change, pockets of resistance are slowly taking shape. And when they emerge, they open windows and allow us to glimpse that change is possible, and that the hope of building a better world must spread from one territory to another. Documenting and reflecting on these struggles and acts of resistance is a vital task in these times. This...

Youth in Handcuffs: a Tale of Criminalisation in the Slums

Dec, 2025 | Tatiana Delgado

Tatiana DelgadoI want to strike a blow against the past, kick the present and embrace the future (“Explosive Poetry”, Maximiliano Castillo). An Adolescence with Rights? In the neighbourhood I grew up in, Santa Rosa, in the province of Buenos Aires, the streets were unpaved, with a ditch of stagnant, foul-smelling water that flooded every block, since there were no sewers. Nor did it have a reliable electricity grid or safe drinking water. The house, made of exposed brick, had little more than...