“How crazy that there is a boat here, how crazy that there is a truck or a plane here.” For some time now, Erik Harley has been obsessed with roundabouts. First he approached them in a more anecdotal way. Later, he realized everything that could be said through them. Now, the journey of thousands of kilometers that he made in just over four months through all the provinces of Spain takes the form of a book, with more than 200 roundabouts analyzed: Pormishuevism. Roundabouts & mamotretos (Anaya Touring, 2025).
The publication is a kind of guide with a certain humorous tone of what can be unraveled if anyone stops to think about what the specific decoration of a roundabout means, but also of those very high, very colorful, very expensive enclaves that populate the country and that speak more about avarice and greed than about public service. “Everything is there, the representation of our apathy, our desires, even our cultural shortcomings,” introduces this expert in urban studies who has half a million followers on Instagram and almost 250,000 on TikTok under his profile. @periphery.periphery.
For this Fine Arts graduate, the streets, squares and buildings that are built are representations of a specific socioeconomic moment. In the case of roundabouts, some more correctly than others, they usually refer to some cultural or political milestone linked to the area, others to tributes to native personalities, there are also those that refer to some social icon, and, of course, many others in which it is not easy to draw any type of relationship beyond the whim of the councilor on duty.
“We have decorated our cities with too much joy. It cannot be that a politician without any specific training in history or art suddenly calls his cousin to do whatever because he has thousands of euros to spend on decorating a roundabout,” defends Harley. In part, that is what causes the fact that in roundabouts, a space continuously traveled by vehicles, “the shock or surprise factor of what we see never disappears, because there are real aberrations.”
A roundabout, conferred as a crossroads, is a very interesting place to monumentalize. It is the ideal space to generate a collective story that really challenges us all, says Harley himself. However, this is not usually the prevailing idea. “Suddenly, they put up a roundabout with a giant ham, I don’t know if it bothers me much as a vegetarian,” he complains.
“Mondongos that reduce visibility”
Table of Contents
The million dollar question finds an easy answer in Harley. In it he explains: “I honestly believe that in roundabouts the only thing that should be there is vegetation. What we never have to do is put tripe trees that reduce visibility. A roundabout has to be a safe place for drivers and pedestrians if they have to travel through it. What cannot be is that we get distracted by freaking out in colors with the eyesore that they have put in the middle and that endangers our safety.”
It cannot be that a politician without any specific training in history or art suddenly calls his cousin to do whatever because he has thousands of euros to spend on decorating a roundabout
Spain is differentand in this too. In fact, it is the second country with the most roundabouts in the world, after France. The urban studies specialist is also very attracted to lo kitsch, something that the roundabout allows. The one that has made him most excited to travel is that of the Masatrigo hill, in a reservoir in Badajoz. Although it is not a roundabout as such, it is known as the largest in Europe. “Driving through there is incredible. On one side the grandiose reservoir, on the other a wonderful hill. That experience was one hundred percent Stendhal,” he asserts.
The most bizarre roundabouts in Spain
But not all of them are so great. In Roundabouts & mamotretos There are more than 200 of them. Here are some devices that decorate roundabouts in Spain: the largest mortar in the world, in Macael (Almería); an Egyptian pyramid that popular art has decorated with graffiti, one of them of a penis, in Atarfe (Granada); In Jun (Granada) there is an obelisk to Twitter, crowned by the little bird that symbolized the ancient social network; the largest construction site in the world, in Huelva.
We continue. A snowman in Santa Cruz (Tenerife); Antarctica, in Azuqueca de Henares (Guadalajara), a metal zipper, in Ávila; a swimming pool, with its stairs and everything, in the middle of a roundabout in León. In Castelló they are not short. In Benicàssim they have the monument to paella day with a 5.5 meter wide paella. In Bizkaia they have the Amorebieta Potato, an unofficial name for a somewhat indescribable bronze sculpture nine meters high, with three legs, seven spikes and an upward stick.
And there is still more. The silhouette of a giant seven-meter ham in the middle of a roundabout, in Monesterio (Badajoz); the Tomatón de Miajadas (Cáceres), a giant 5.5 meters in diameter and 12 meters high that celebrates the most iconic horticultural product in the area. In Oleiros (A Coruña), there is the O Che roundabout, dedicated to the guerrilla, with his face materialized in 70 tons of Corten steel and granite and eight meters high.
Madrid capital is not spared. The Hermitage of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, from the 17th century, is in the middle of a roundabout on Logroño Avenue that can only be accessed through a pedestrian crossing. A play on words takes us to the Monster of Leganés, another roundabout in this municipality in the south of the region. There is also the Monument to the Dentist, in San Benito – Patiño (Murcia), with a giant stainless steel grinding wheel five meters high.
And “Pormishuevism” too present
harley is the author who coined the concept “Pormishuevism”, and he defines it like this: “Our impulse to build the biggest, the most visible, the most expensive.” In this sense, he considers that “the way in which Spain has been built and the territory articulated is extremely masculine.” And he proves this in his monograph, which he calls “emotional cartography” of a country that has built so much and so quickly that it has forgotten why it did so, as it explains in its introduction.
A roundabout has to be a safe place (…) What cannot be is that we get distracted by being amazed by the colors that have been placed in the middle and that puts us in danger.
The specialist encompasses all of this in what he calls “constructive hypertrophy.” As he explains, the idea refers to “building to show the next person that you can do it, and often without thinking about maintenance, which is a totally atrocious thing, especially when it comes to public money.” At this point, the content creator is aware of the reality that surrounds him: “It may seem perfect to me that we spend money on mammoths, but when everyone already has something to put in their mouths.”
The writer considers that citizens, from suffering so much from this type of phenomena, have already hardened their skin: “I, who know urban life well, believe that we have become accustomed to auditoriums being built with crazy extra costs,” he exemplifies. Some magnificent examples of this reality appear in the publication: airports without airplanes, empty auditoriums, museums without works of art, crazy theme parks and abandoned macro-projects.
And it gets wet. Harley finds it “an outrage” that the Government has actively and passively promised the demolition of the caroband there continues that mausoleum of depravity in front of the Almeria beach. And he adds: “The proliferation of beachfront hotels in protected areas of the Canary Islands bothers me deeply, when Canarian society knows perfectly well that the wealth generated by tourism does not reach their pockets. It seems that we are in the 60s, when it was thought that to create wealth we have to destroy nature.”
From a humorous tone to being “a little communist”
The author of Roundabouts & mamotretos, whose publication has four years of intense work behind it, succeeds in continuing with its particular communicative tone, a dance measured to the millimeter between sarcasm and humor in the face of social denunciation. Thanks to this, it has made urban planning and architecture a greater part of the public debate. “But doing it with that tone takes away the seriousness of the matter a little, so I’m always between one thing and the other,” he admits.
In any case, Harley always opts for reliable content, with data obtained from official sources and even court rulings, which pisses off voters on both the left and the right. That has not earned him too much hate on networks, “and look, it can come from many places, due to homophobia or baldphobia,” he illustrates. He still remembers with a certain humor a comment on one of his videos that marked him more than others: “A little communist, but what a funny son of a bitch,” they told him.
Many times [estas rotondas se hacen] without thinking about maintenance, which is a totally atrocious thing, especially when it comes to public money
Turn and turn
Harley is proud of Spain as a country. “It’s absolutely incredible, man, its gastronomy, its people,” he says over a video call. “We have kicked out the Bourbons twice, it’s fucking crazy. What happens is that we have to defend it, because we don’t always put people at the head of the public who defend the public,” he adds. On the other hand, after getting behind the wheel for almost five months and traveling through Spain from top to bottom, this urban planning specialist emphasizes all the help he has received from anonymous people and the Nación Rotonda collective when preparing the book.
In total, more than 300 pages make us revisit part of our most recent history from roundabout to roundabout. In addition, the publication is edited in an attractive volume full of images. As Harley himself invites us, sometimes in life all we have to do is look closely at what surrounds us and keep turning and turning until the views change.
