Heterotopía y espacialidad en La habitación del presidente
Heterotopia and Spatiality in La habitación del Presidente

Summary/Abstract: In a deeply poetic, reflexive and deliberately fragmented style, Ricardo Romero constructs in his novel a story which, through the mechanism of estrangement, presents the thin line existing between what is perceived as private and intimate, and what belongs entirely to the public domain. From the subjective perspective of a child, La habitación del Presidente irrupts into the sinister territory of familiar spaces, rediscovering the apparently aseptic nooks of the map as other-spaces, an authentic heterotopia settled deeply in the familiar and mundane intimacy. The estrangement of the first-person narrator is projected onto the reader, who finds himself suddenly inserted in a universe very similar to his own, but with certain tacit rules which make the story border on fantasy: the presence of a room for the President in every house, the banning on basements, the President himself, and an aura of mystery that surrounds the imminent possibility of his visit. The perception of spaces as alien, other-spaces charged with particular semantics, constitutes the main mechanism that supports the structure of the story.

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