Sacred Mountains Vs Corrupted Cities: Spatial Imaginaries of Green Populism in Greece

This paper examines how green populist movements in Greece mobilize spatial imaginaries to construct moral boundaries between the “pure” local community and the “corrupted” political and economic elites. Focusing on the Save the Agrafa movement, which opposes the industrial installation of wind farms in the mountainous region of Agrafa, the study explores how environmental activism becomes a site of populist articulation where geography, morality, and identity intersect. Drawing on discourse and visual analysis of social media content, local press coverage, and activist materials, the paper analyzes how the Agrafa landscape is symbolically transformed into a moral homeland, a sacred and ancestral space threatened by state neglect, corporate greed, and distant technocratic powers (Athens, Brussels, multinational investors). In this narrative, nature and nation fuse into a single spatial imaginary that opposes “the people of the land” to “corrupt elites” who betray both environmental integrity and local autonomy. Theoretically, the paper combines insights from populism studies, spatial theory, and affective geography to argue that environmental populism in Greece reterritorializes populist conflict along emotional and ecological lines. By sacralizing the landscape, movements like Save the Agrafa reimagine environmental defense as a patriotic and moral struggle, producing an affective geography where local space becomes a repository of purity, authenticity, and resistance. Ultimately, the paper contributes to understanding how green populism in Southern Europe transforms environmental disputes into moral-spatial conflicts that challenge both neoliberal governance and the urban technocratic imagination.