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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on 10 months ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Barcelona, this paper explores the circulation and consumption of antibiotics in Spain through the prism of crises in care and capitalism.

Paper long abstract:

Recent historical work on the circulation of antibiotics in Spain during "the long post war years" has described the complex inter-relationships between antimicrobial medications and processes of political and socio-economic transformation. The supply of penicillin reflected the material scarcity and black-market dependency that characterised economic life under the first decades of Franco's dictatorship, whereas the emergence of concerns about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the regulatory regimes that followed have been described as agents in the Spanish transition to democracy in the 1970s and 1980s.

In recent years, as AMR has become a priority for global health, the "problem" of antibiotic consumption in Spain has been framed in national media and public health campaigns as a question of scientific rationality versus entrenched cultural norms and ill-informed customs. At the same time however, the international financial crisis that began in 2007 hit Spain hard, resulting in higher levels of unemployment, poverty, and what has been termed a "crisis of care".

Drawing on accounts of medical doctors and residents of Barcelona, this paper explores how the old "miracle drug" continues to promise "quick fix" solutions in an era defined by work precarity and time poverty. We argue that the circulation and consumption of antibiotics in contemporary Spain is animated by crises in capital and care and cannot be adequately understood in abstraction from this broader political-economic context.