Visual and Material Culture Subject Guide: VMCS/SPAN 1821 Spain: A Mosaic of Cultures

Medieval Spain is brilliantly recreated, in all its variety and richness, in this comprehensive survey. Likely to become the standard work in English, the book treats the entire Iberian Peninsula and all the people who inhabited it, from the coming of the Visigoths in the fifth century to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Integrating a wealth of information about the diverse peoples, institutions, religions, and customs that flourished in the states that are now Spain and Portugal, Joseph F. O'Callaghan focuses on the continuing attempts to impose political unity on the peninsula.O'Callaghan divides his story into five compact historical periods and discusses political, social, economic, and cultural developments in each period. By treating states together, he is able to put into proper perspective the relationships among them, their similarities and differences, and the continuity of development from one period to the next. He gives proper attention to Spain's contacts with the rest of the medieval world, but his main concern is with the events and institutions on the peninsula itself. Illustrations, genealogical charts, maps, and an extensive bibliography round out a book that will be welcomed by scholars and student of Spanish and Portuguese history and literature, as well as by medievalists, as the fullest account to date of Spanish history in the Middle Ages.

Drawing from both Christian and Islamic sources, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain demonstrates that the clash of arms between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula that began in the early eighth century was transformed into a crusade by the papacy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Successive popes accorded to Christian warriors willing to participate in the peninsular wars against Islam the same crusading benefits offered to those going to the Holy Land. Joseph F. O'Callaghan clearly demonstrates that any study of the history of the crusades must take a broader view of the Mediterranean to include medieval Spain. Following a chronological overview of crusading in the Iberian peninsula from the late eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century, O'Callaghan proceeds to the study of warfare, military finance, and the liturgy of reconquest and crusading. He concludes his book with a consideration of the later stages of reconquest and crusade up to and including the fall of Granada in 1492, while noting that the spiritual benefits of crusading bulls were still offered to the Spanish until the Second Vatican Council of 1963. Although the conflict described in this book occurred more than eight hundred years ago, recent events remind the world that the intensity of belief, rhetoric, and action that gave birth to crusade, holy war, and jihad remains a powerful force in the twenty-first century.

The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain' is a detailed study of the events surrounding this infamous chapter in Spanish history. Based on hundreds of documents discovered, deciphered, and analyzed during decades of intensive archival research, this work focuses on the practical consequences of the expulsion both for those expelled and those remaining behind. It responds to basic questions such as: What became of property owned by Jewish individuals and communities? What became of outstanding debts between Jews and Christians? How was the edict of expulsion implemented? Who was in charge? How did they operate? What happened to those who converted to Christianity in order to remain in Spain or return to that country? The material summarized and analyzed in this study also sheds light on Jewish life in Spain preceding the expulsion. For example, Jews are shown to have been present in remote villages where they were not hitherto known to have lived, and documents detailing lawsuits between Christians related to debts left behind by Jews reveal much about business and financial relations between Jews and Christians. By focusing on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in such detail - for example, by naming the magistrates who presided over the confiscation of Jewish communal property - Professor Beinart takes history out of the realm of abstraction and gives it concrete reality.

This book traces the political evolution of the Iberian peninsula from a group of late Roman imperial provinces to the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies of the Trastamara and Braganza dynasties of the mid-fifteenth century. The book is planned as a series of essays on the main chronological periods of medieval Spain, and sketches the major political, economic, social and intellectual features of each age and the interaction of Christian, Jew and Muslim in the Iberian peninsula. It also describes the effects of successive invasions, and the evolving interaction between a relatively weak Islamic rule and a variety of Christian kingdoms whose consolidation had only just begun by the late Middle Ages. It provides a wealth of analysis or description in a compact fashion and also covers the entire medieval period.

Scholars, journalists, and even politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain--'al-Andalus'--as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth. In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Dario Fernandez-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden history by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed. This supposed beacon of peaceful coexistence began, of course, with the Islamic Caliphate's conquest of Spain. Far from a land of religious tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of Christians and other groups--all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise provides a desperately needed reassessment of medieval Spain. As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its 'multiculturalism' and 'diversity,' Fernandez-Morera sets the historical record straight--showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless

This book challenges the reputation of the Spanish Inquisition as an instrument of religious persecution, torture and repressionand looks at its wider role as an educative force in society. A reassessment of the history of the Spanish Inquisition. Challenges the reputation of the Inquisition as an instrument of religious persecution, torture and repression. Looks at the wider role of the Inquisition as an educative force in society. Draws on the findings of recent research by American, British and European scholars. Includes original documentary evidence in translation.

Once Europe's supreme maritime power, Spain by the mid-eighteenth century was facing fierce competition from England and France. England, in particular, had successfully mustered the financial resources necessary to confront its Atlantic rivals by mobilizing both aristocracy and merchant bourgeoisie in support of its imperial ambitions. Spain, meanwhile, remained overly dependent on the profits of its New World silver mines to finance both metropolitan and colonial imperatives, and England's naval superiority constantly threatened the vital flow of specie. When Charles III ascended the Spanish throne in 1759, then, after a quarter-century as ruler of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Spain and its colonial empire were seriously imperiled. Two hundred years of Hapsburg rule, followed by a half-century of ineffectual Bourbon "reforms," had done little to modernize Spain's increasingly antiquated political, social, economic, and intellectual institutions. Charles III, recognizing the pressing need to renovate these institutions, set his Italian staff--notably the Marqués de Esquilache, who became Secretary of the Consejo de Hacienda (the Exchequer)--to this formidable task. In Apogee of Empire, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein trace the attempt, initially under Esquilache's direction, to reform the Spanish establishment and, later, to modify and modernize the relationship between the metropole and its colonies. Within Spain, Charles and his architects of reform had to be mindful of determining what adjustments could be made that would help Spain confront its enemies without also radically altering the Hapsburg inheritance. As described in impressive detail by the authors, the bitter, seven-year conflict that ensued between reformers and traditionalists ended in a coup in 1766 that forced Charles to send Esquilache back to Italy. After this setback at home, Charles still hoped to effect constructive change in Spain's imperial system, primarily through the incremental implementation of a policy of comercio libre (free-trade). These reforms, made half-heartedly at best, failed as well, and by 1789 Spain would find itself ill prepared for the coming decades of upheaval in Europe and America. An in-depth study of incremental response by an old imperial order to challenges at home and abroad, Apogee of Empire is also a sweeping account of the personalities, places, and policies that helped to shape the modern Atlantic world.

This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus's arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J. H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America. Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires' processes of colonization, the character of their colonial societies, their distinctive styles of imperial government, and the independence movements mounted against them. Based on wide reading in the history of the two great Atlantic civilizations, the book sets the Spanish and British colonial empires in the context of their own times and offers us insights into aspects of this dual history that still influence the Americas. ]]>

Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World consists of ten chapters that examine the representation of political, economic, military and symbolic power both in Spain and the New World under the Habsburgs. In addition to analyzing the dynamics of power in written texts, chapters also examine pieces of material culture including coats of arms, coins, engravings and paintings by such artists as Titian and El Greco.

A narrative and interpretive history of Spanish and Portuguese exploration, settlement, and colonization of the Americas.

A vivid and extraordinarily wide-ranging collection of writings by an eminent historian of Spain and its empire When J. H. Elliott published Spain and Its World, 1500-1700 some twenty years ago, one of many enthusiasts declared, "For anyone interested in the history of empire, of Europe and of Spain, here is a book to keep within reach, to read, to study and to enjoy" (Times Literary Supplement). Since then Elliott has continued to explore the history of Spain and the Hispanic world with originality and insight, producing some of the most influential work in the field. In this new volume he gathers writings that reflect his recent research and thinking on politics, art, culture, and ideas in Europe and the colonial worlds between 1500 and 1800. The volume includes fourteen essays, lectures, and articles of remarkable breadth and freshness, written with Elliott's characteristic brio. It includes an unpublished lecture in honor of the late Hugh Trevor-Roper. Organized around three themes--early modern Europe, European overseas expansion, and the works and historical context of El Greco, Velázquez, Rubens, and Van Dyck--the book offers a rich survey of the themes at the heart of Elliott's interests throughout a career distinguished by excellence and innovation.

A major reassessment of Philip V's leadership and what it meant for the modern Spanish state. Often dismissed as ineffective, indolent, and dominated by his second wife, Philip V of Spain (1700-1746), the first Bourbon king, was in fact the greatest threat to peace in Europe during his reign. Under his rule, Spain was a dynamic force and expansionist power, especially in the Mediterranean world. Campaigns in Italy and North Africa revitalized Spanish control in the Mediterranean region, and the arrival of the Bourbon dynasty signaled a sharp break from Habsburg attitudes and practices. Challenging long-held understandings of early eighteenth-century Europe and the Atlantic world, Christopher Storrs draws on a rich array of primary documents to trace the political, military, and financial innovations that laid the framework for the modern Spanish state and the coalescence of a national identity. Storrs illuminates the remarkable revival of Spanish power after 1713 and sheds new light on the often underrated king who made Spain's resurgence possible.

This book is the first single volume history of modern Spain to appear in over 30 years. It describes Spain's emergence in the nineteenth century as the first modern post-imperial power and examines the vast social and economic changes which Spain witnessed during this period. In lucid and accessible prose, the author provides a gripping account of 131 years of politics, warfare and social conflict. Charles Esdaile places particular emphasis on crucial periods in the history of modern Spain. He shows how nineteenth century Spain was in many ways shaped by the Peninsular War of 1804-18, as the politicization of the army during this conflict cast a shadow over the century-long political struggle between liberalism and absolutism. Esdaile also demonstrates that the years between 1868 and 1874 were a watershed in the history of modern Spain. During this time the social and political changes of the century were consolidated and Spain emerged as a constitutional monarchy. Providing a riveting account of the events of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, this book shows that the result of the brutal struggle between the nationalists and republicans was the preservation of the social and economic order that had arisen in the nineteenth century. Blending analysis with narrative, Charles Esdaile allows the reader to understand nineteenth century Spain on its own terms and to see how the seeds of the civil war of 1936-39 were sown by the failure of liberalism in the previous century.

The nineteenth-century Hispanic world was shattered to its core by war, civil war, and revolution. At the same time, it confronted a new period of European and North-American expansion and development. In these essays, authors explore major, dynamic ways that people in Spain envisaged how they would adapt and change, or simply continue as they were. Each chapter title begins with the words "How to...", and examines the ways in which Spaniards conceived or undertook major activities that shaped their lives. These range from telling the time to being a man. Adaptability, paradox, and inconsistency come to the fore in many of the essays. We find before us a human quest for opportunity and survival in a complex and changing world. This wide-ranging book contains chapters by leading scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain.

A lively and concise introduction to the politics and national life of Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries, covering both cultural and political history and exploring the complicated questions of citizenship and national identity that characterized Spain's political life even into the 1970s.

For the country of Spain, the slogan that launched the tourist industry in the 1960s, "Spain is different," has come to haunt historians. Since then, much effort and energy have been expended in endeavoring to show that Spain has not been 'different,' but is actually 'normal.' Still, many of the defining features of the Spain's past - the civil wars, the weak liberalism, the Franco dictatorship - are taken as evidence of its distinctiveness. A related problem is that few historians have actually placed Spain's trajectory over the last two centuries within a truly comparative context. This book does so by tackling a number of key themes in modern Spanish history: liberalism, nationalism, anti-clericalism, the Second Republic, the Franco dictatorship, and the transition to democracy. Is Spain Different? thereby offers a fresh and stimulating perspective on Spain's recent past and also sheds new light on the current political debates regarding Spain's place in the world. (Series: Sussex Studies in Spanish History)

The Spanish Civil War has gone down in history for the horrific violence that it generated. The climate of euphoria and hope that greeted the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy was utterly transformed just five years later by a cruel and destructive civil war. Here Julián Casanova, one of Spain's leading historians, offers a magisterial new account of this critical period in Spanish history. He exposes the ways in which the Republic brought into the open simmering tensions between Catholics and hardline anticlericalists, bosses and workers, Church and State, order and revolution. In 1936 these conflicts tipped over into the sacas, paseos and mass killings which are still passionately debated today. The book also explores the decisive role of the international instability of the 1930s in the duration and outcome of the conflict. Franco's victory was in the end a victory for Hitler and Mussolini and for dictatorship over democracy.

This 2005 book explores the ideas and culture surrounding the cataclysmic civil war that engulfed Spain from 1936 to 1939. It features specially commissioned articles from leading historians in Spain, Britain and the US which examine the complex interaction of national and local factors, contributing to the shape and course of the war. They argue that the 'splintering of Spain' resulted from the myriad cultural cleavages of society in the 1930s that are investigated here at both local and national levels. Thus, this book tends to see the civil war less as a single great conflict between two easily identifiable sets of ideas, social classes or ways of life than historians have previously done. The Spanish tragedy, at the level of everyday life, was shaped by many tensions, both those that were formally political and those that were to do with people's perceptions and understanding of the society around them.

This book provides a comparative history of the domestic and international nature of Spain's First Carlist War (1833-40) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), as well as the impact of both conflicts. The book demonstrates how and why Spain's struggle for liberty was won in the 1830s only for it to be lost one hundred years later. It shows how both civil wars were world wars in miniature, fought in part by foreign volunteers under the gaze and in the political consciousness of the outside world. Prefaced by a short introduction, The Spanish Civil Wars is arranged into two domestic and international sections, each with three thematic chapters comparing each civil war in detail. The main analytical perspectives are political, social and new military history in nature, but they also explore aspects of gender, culture, nationalism and separatism, economy, religion and, especially, the war in its international context. The book integrates international archival research with the latest scholarship on both subjects and also includes a glossary, a bibliography and several images. It is a key resource tailored to the needs of students and scholars of modern Spain which offers an intriguing and original new perspective on the Spanish Civil War.

This book presents a new history of the most important conflict in European affairs during the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War. It describes the complex origins of the conflict, the collapse of the Spanish Republic and the outbreak of the only mass worker revolution in the history of Western Europe. Stanley Payne explains the character of the Spanish revolution and the complex web of republican politics, while also examining the development of Franco's counter-revolutionary dictatorship. Payne gives attention to the multiple meanings and interpretations of war and examines why the conflict provoked such strong reactions at the time, and long after. The book also explains the military history of the war and its place in the history of military development, the non-intervention policy of the democracies and the role of German, Italian and Soviet intervention, concluding with an analysis of the place of the war in European affairs, in the context of twentieth-century revolutionary civil wars.

The years 1936-1945 in Spain saw catastrophic civil war followed by fierce repression and economic misery. Families were torn apart and social relations were disrupted by death, exile and defeat. Society became traumatized so deeply that people avoided talking openly of these years for decades. This study attempts to show how the Civil War was understood and absorbed, particularly by those who could claim themselves as 'the victors', during and in the immediate aftermath of the conflict. It does so by exploring the interchanges between violence, ideas and economics during a period in which liberalism was seen as foreign contagion that infected carriers of impurities such as freemasons, regional nationalists, the working class, non-Catholics and women. This was the context of the internal colonization that confirmed Franco's victory, concentrated economic power, and left executions and starvation in its wake.

The definitive work on the Spanish Civil War, a classic of modern historical scholarship and a masterful narrative. Paul Preston is the world's foremost historian of Spain. This surging history recounts the struggles of the 1936 war in which more than 3,000 Americans took up arms. Tracking the emergence of Francisco Franco's brutal (and, ultimately, extraordinarily durable) fascist dictatorship, Preston assesses the ways in which the Spanish Civil War presaged the Second World War that ensued so rapidly after it. The attempted social revolution in Spain awakened progressive hopes during the Depression, but the conflict quickly escalated into a new and horrific form of warfare. As Preston shows, the unprecedented levels of brutality were burned into the American consciousness as never before by the revolutionary war reporting of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Herbert Matthews, Vincent Sheean, Louis Fischer, and many others. Completely revised, including previously unseen material on Franco's treatment of women in wartime prisons, The Spanish Civil War is a classic work on this pivotal epoch in the twentieth century.

Franco's Spain looks beyond the mythology surrounding the origins of the dictatorship to provide a critical overview of the regime. From its emergence from a bloody uprising against a democratic government; through the 'high period' of francoism with its poverty, hunger and fear, followed bya complex period of change and economic growth; to the final demise of the dictatorship, amid open opposition and internal defections.Economics and society are as integral a part of the story in Franco's Spain as politics, and international relations find their place alongside purely domestic issues. The book also peers beyond the grave, examining the transition to democracy after the dictator's death in 1975.

An open-minded and clear-eyed reexamination of the cultural artifacts of Franco's fascist Spain True, false, or both? Spain's 1939-75 dictator, Francisco Franco, was a pioneer of water conservation and sustainable energy. Pedro Almodóvar is only the most recent in a line of great antiestablishment film directors who have worked continuously in Spain since the 1930s. As early as 1943, former Republicans and Nationalists were collaborating in Spain to promote the visual arts, irrespective of the artists' political views. Censorship can benefit literature. Memory is not the same thing as history. Inside Spain as well as outside, many believe-wrongly-that under Franco's fascist dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or shown. In his groundbreaking new book,Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936, Jeremy Treglown argues that oversimplifications like these of a complicated, ambiguous actuality have contributed to a separate falsehood: that there was and continues to be a national pact to forget the evils for which Franco's side (and, according to this version, his side alone) was responsible. The myth that truthfulness was impossible inside Franco's Spain may explain why foreign narratives (For Whom the Bell Tolls,Homage to Catalonia) have seemed more credible than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de España was, as its Spanish name asserts, Spain's own war, and in recent years the country has begun to make a more public attempt to "reclaim" its modern history of fascism. How it is doing so, and the role played in the process by notions of historical memory, are among the subjects of this wide-ranging and challenging book. Franco's Crypt reveals that despite state censorship, events of the time were vividly recorded. Treglown looks at what's actually there-monuments, paintings, public works, novels, movies, video games-and considers, in a captivating narrative, the totality of what it shows. The result is a much-needed reexamination of a history we only thought we knew.

Franco was a military man before all else. His supporters said that his handling of politics was that of a brilliant strategist, his detractors that he ran Spain as if it were a barracks. 100 years after his birth, 20 years after his death, he remains a deeply divisive figure, and his contribution, for good or ill, to the emergence of modern Spain is still intensely controversial. Sheelagh Ellwood assesses his career, through the Civil War and his forty years of supreme power, in this incisive study.

This is a book about the role of culture in social change and the Spanish transition to democracy after Franco. Laura Desfor Edles takes a distinctively culturalist approach to the 'strategy of consensus' deployed by the Spanish elite and uses systematic textual interpretation (with a particular focus on Spanish newspapers) to show how a new symbolic framework emerged in post-Franco Spain which enabled the resolution of specific events critical to the success of the transition. In addition to uncovering underlying processes of symbolization, she shows that politico-historical transitions can themselves be understood as ritual processes, involving as they do phases and symbols of separation, liminality and re-aggregation.

This book considers the most electorally successful political party in Spain, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), which was in government for two of the three decades since it won office under Felipe González in 1982. Providing rich historical background, the book's main focus is on the period since General Franco's death in 1975. It charts Spain's modernisation under the PSOE, with a particular focus on the role played by European integration in this process. Covering events including the 2011 general election, the book is one of the most up-to-date works available in English and will be of great interest to academics and undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of Spanish and European studies.

While the simultaneously creative and destructive forces of modernity in Western Europe have been well studied, the case of Spain has often been overlooked. Visualizing Spanish Modernity concentrates on the time period 1868-1939, which marks not only the beginning of the formation of a modern economy and the consolidation of the liberal state, but also the growth of urban centers and spaces made possible by electricity, transportation, mass production and the emergence of an entertainment industry. The authors examine how mass print culture, early cinema, popular drama, photography, fashion, painting, museums and urban planning played a role in the way that Spanish society saw itself and was in turn seen by the rest of the world. Assessing how new cultural forms were instrumental in shaping Spaniards into citizens of the modern world, the authors consider such subjects as the spectacle of the body, notions of race and gender, the changing meanings of time, space and motion, the relationship between technology and everyday life and popular culture.

Spain is a country whose development arouses particular interest in the world because of the huge increase in Spanish-speaking populations, as well as its economic successes and location between Africa and Europe as well as it rich historical tapestry. This book presents chapters dealing with current topics of interest in Spain dealing with economic, political and social issues.

This book, written by three of the world's leading experts on Spanish politics, is the first comprehensive study of the origins and basic character of Spain's democratic political system. It analyses the regime's core political institutions, its political parties and party systems, patterns of electoral behaviour, the evolution of Spain's political culture, and the impact of these social and institutional changes on public policy processes and outputs. The authors survey those aspects of Spanish society and politics that had contributed to the country's inability to sustain a stable and d'emocratic regime prior to the 1970s. They argue that the successful transition to and consolidation of democracy was made possible by socioeconomic modernisation, cultural change, and by decisions made by political elites in the establishment of core democratic institutions and the conduct of electoral competition. This book is based on over 500 hours of interviews with Spanish political elites, extensive analyses of survey data, and other original research.

This thorough analysis of immigration governance in Spain explores the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion at play at one of Europe's southern borders. Drawing on interviews with policymakers and from parliamentary debates, laws, and policy documents, David Moffette reveals the complicated legal obstacles facing migrants with precarious immigration status. He shows how issues of culture, labour, and security intersect to create a regime of migration governance that is at once progressive and repressive. This book contributes to debates in socio-legal, border, and citizenship studies.

Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders: Migrants, Transnational Encounters, and Identity in Spain offers a new approach to the cultural history of contemporary Spain, examining the ways in which Spain s own self-conceptions are changing and multiplying in response to migrants from Latin America and Africa. In the last twenty-five years, Spain has gone from being a country of net emigration to one in which immigrants make up nearly 12 percent of the population. This rapid growth has made migrants increasingly visible in both mass media and in Spanish visual and literary culture. This book examines the origins of media discourses on immigration and takes the analysis of contemporary Spanish culture as its primary framework, while also drawing insights from sociology and history. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders introduces readers to a wide range of recent films, journals, novels, photography, paintings, and music to reconsider contemporary Spain through its varied encounters with migrants. It follows the stages of the migrant s own journey, beginning outside Spanish territory, continuing across the border (either at the barbed-wire fences of Ceuta and Melilla or the waters of the Atlantic or the Strait of Gibraltar), and then considers what happens to migrants after they arrive and settle in Spain. Each chapter analyzes one of these stages in order to illustrate the complexity of contemporary Spanish identity. This examination of Spanish culture shows how Spain is evolving into a new space of imagination, one that can no longer be defined without the migrant a space in which there is no unified identity but rather a new self-understanding is being born. Vega-Duran both places Spain in a larger European context and draws attention to some of the features that, from a comparative perspective, make the Spanish case interesting and often unique. She argues that Spain cannot be understood today outside the Transatlantic and Mediterranean spaces (both real and imaginary) where Spaniards and migrants meet. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders offers a timely study of present-day Spain, and makes an original contribution to the vibrant debates about multiculturalism and nation-formation that are taking"

In this groundbreaking ethnography, Ruben Andersson, a gifted anthropologist and journalist, travels along the clandestine migration trail from Senegal and Mali to the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Through the voices of his informants, Andersson explores, viscerally and emphatically, how Europe's increasingly powerful border regime meets and interacts with its target-the clandestine migrant. This vivid, rich work examines the subterranean migration flow from Africa to Europe, and shifts the focus from the "illegal immigrants" themselves to the vast industry built around their movements. This fascinating and accessible book is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of international migration and the changing texture of global culture.

This book offers a comprehensive account of modern Spanish culture, tracing its dramatic and often unexpected development from its beginnings after the Revolution of 1868 to the present day. Specially-commissioned essays by leading experts provide analyses of the historical and political background of modern Spain, the culture of the major autonomous regions (notably Castile, Catalonia, and the Basque Country), and the country's literature: narrative, poetry, theatre and the essay. Spain's recent development is divided into three main phases: from 1868 to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; the period of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco; and the post-Franco arrival of democracy. The concept of 'Spanish culture' is investigated, and there are studies of Spanish painting and sculpture, architecture, cinema, dance, music, and the modern media. A chronology and guides to further reading are provided, making the volume an invaluable introduction to the politics, literature and culture of modern Spain.

This is the first comprehensive history of Spanish literature to be published in English since the 1970s. It brings together experts from the USA, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Together, the essays cover the full range of Spanish poetry, prose, and theatre from the early Middle Ages to the present day. The classics of the canon of eleven centuries of Spanish literature are covered, from Berceo, Cervantes and Calderón to García Lorca and Martín Gaite, but attention is also paid to lesser known writers and works. The chapters chart a wide range of literary periods and movements. The volume concludes with a consideration of the influences of film and new media on modern Spanish literature. This invaluable book contains an introduction, more than fifty substantial chapters, a chronology (covering key events in history, literature, and art), a bibliography, and a comprehensive index for easy reference.

Focusing on the developments over the last twenty years in Spain, this stimulating book contains twenty-eight original essays, by recognized specialists, that offer a new interdisciplinary approach to contemporary Spanish culture and society. Combining overviews and case studies, the essays range widely over a diverse series of topic areas, including race, nationalism and identity, the media, gender and sex, religion, sport, and shopping. By providing students, scholars, and general readers entrance to the key debates and issues involved in contemporary Spanish culture, this volume represents a crucial landmark in the ongoing definition of the new field of Spanish Cultural Studies.

On April 26, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain was bombed by Hitler's Luftwaffe in the midst of a bloody civil war on behalf of Francisco Franco's rebel forces. Twenty-four hours later, the village lay in ruins, its population decimated. This act of terror and unspeakable cruelty--the first large-scale attack against civilians in modern warfare-outraged the world, and one man in particular. Pablo Picasso, an expatriate living in Paris, responded to the devastation in his homeland by beginning work on Guernica, a painting that many today consider the greatest artwork of the twentieth century. Weaving themes of politics, art, war, and morality, and featuring some of the twentieth century's most memorable and infamous figures, Martin follows this renowned masterwork across decades and continents. From Europe to America and, finally, back to Spain, Picasso's Warsheds light on the conflict that was an ominous prelude to World War II and delivers an unforgettable portrait of a genius whose visionary statement about the horror and terrible wounds of war still resonates today.

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) is perhaps Spain's most famous writer and cultural icon. By the age of thirty, he had become the most successful member of a brilliant generation of poets, winning critical and popular acclaim by fusing traditional and avant-garde themes and techniques. He would go on to reinvent Spanish theater too, writing bold, experimental, and often shocking plays that dared openly to explore both female and homosexual desire. A vibrant and mercurial personality, by the time Lorca visited Argentina in late 1933, he had become the most celebrated writer and cultural figure in the Spanish-speaking world.   But Lorca's fame could not survive politics: his identification with the splendor of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-36) was one of the reasons behind Lorca's murder in August 1936 at the hands of right-wing insurgents at the start of the Spanish Civil War. In this biography, Stephen Roberts seeks out the roots of the man and his work in the places in which Lorca lived and died: the Granadan countryside where he spent his childhood; the Granada and Madrid of the 1910s, '20s, and '30s where he received his education and achieved success as a writer; his influential visits to Catalonia, New York, Cuba, and Argentina; and the mountains outside Granada where his body still lies in an undiscovered grave. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of a complex and brilliant man as well as new insight into the works that helped to make his name.

Feted by his contemporaries, Federico García Lorca's status has only grown since his death in 1936: poet, playwright, political martyr, gay icon, champion of women, defender of the oppressed. This book guides readers through the key themes and concerns in Lorca's work. It demonstrates how Lorca applied his poetic sensibilities and lyrical craft to what were, in essence, tangible, real-life issues: the plight of Andalusia's Romani people, the idea of modernity and the condition of women in Spain. What becomes evident is that, even though he was writing at a time when many writers and artists were less inclined to deal directly with the things of the world, Lorca maintained a profound interest in the human subject and in the world around him. It is this interest, the book argues, in tandem with his poetic vision and craft, that ensured his most popular works' enduring, universal appeal.

Spanish architect and designer, Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was an important and influential figure in the history of contemporary Spanish art. His use of colour, application of a range of materials and the introduction of organic forms into his constructions were an innovation in the realm of architecture. In his journal, Gaudí freely expressed his own feelings on art, "the colours used in architecture have to be intense, logical and fertile." His completed works (the Casa Batlló, 1905-1907 and the Casa Milà, 1905-1910) and his incomplete works (the restoration of the Poblet Monastery and the altarpiece of Alella in Barcelona) illustrate the importance of this philosophy. His furniture designs were conceived with the same philosophy, as shown, for example, in his own office (1878) or the lamps in the Plaza Real in Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia (1882-1926) was a monumental project which eventually took over his life (it was still incomplete at the time of his death).

Spanish Catalan architect, Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926), is known for his distinct sculptural designs, which might be described as bizarre, fantastic, magical, and surreal. This book features his complete works.

A timeless story of love, morality, and tragedy, Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina is a classic of Spanish literature. Second only to Don Quixote in its cultural importance, Rojas’s dramatic dialogue presents the elaborate tale of a star-crossed courtship between the young nobleman Calisto and the beautiful maiden Melibea in fifteenth-century Spain. Their unforgettable saga plays out in vibrant exchanges, presented here in a brilliant new translation by award-winning translator Margaret Sayers Peden.   After a chance encounter with Melibea leaves Calisto entranced by her charms, he enlists the services of Celestina, an aged prostitute, madam, and procuress, to arrange another meeting. She promptly seizes control of the affair, guiding it through a series of mishaps before it meets its tragic end. At times a comic character and at others a self-assertive promoter of women’s sexual license, Celestina is an inimitable personality with a surprisingly modern consciousness, certain to be relished by a new generation of readers.  

Winner of the 2015 Publication Prize awarded by the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland. Celestina by Fernando de Rojas is a canonical work of late medieval Spanish literature and one ofthe earliest European "best-sellers". However, while we have clear evidence of its popularity and influence, scholarship has not adequately answered the question of why it continued to hold such appeal for early modern audiences.This book explores Celestina's role as a key interlocutor in European literature and thought; it argues that the work continued to be meaningful because it engaged with one of the period's defining preoccupations: the human condition, an idea often conceptualised in pro et contra debates about the misery and dignity of man. Taking an ideological and comparative approach that focuses on Celestina's reception in sixteenth-century Spain and Italy, it reads Rojas's work against a network of texts that were translated and printed concurrently in both peninsulas yet which have not previously been examined in depth or detail alongside it, including Baldassare Castiglione'sIl Cortegiano, Fernán Pérez de Oliva's Diálogo de la dignidad del hombre, and Pietro Aretino's Vita delle puttane. Each chapter explores themes common to sixteenth-century debates about the human condition, such as self-knowledge, self-fashioning, the formative role of language, the tension between freedom and constraint, as well as the access to knowledge provided by vernacular fiction in the context of early modern censorship. Rachel Scott is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King's College London.

The Alhambra has long been a byword for exotic and melancholy beauty. In his absorbing new book, Robert Irwin, Arabist and novelist, examines its history and allure.The Alhambra is the only Muslim palace to have survived since the Middle Ages. Built by a threatened dynasty of Muslim Spain, it was preserved as a monument to the triumph of Christianity. Every day thousands of tourists enter this magnificent site to be awestruck by its towers and courts, its fountained gardens, its honeycombed ceilings and intricate tile work. It is a complex full of mysteries--even its purpose is unclear. Its sophisticated ornamentation is not indiscriminate but full of hidden meaning. Its most impressive buildings were designed not by architects, but by philosophers and poets. The Alhambra, which resembles a fairy-tale palace, was constructed by slave labor in an era of economic decline, plague, and political violence. Its sumptuously appointed halls have lain witness to murder and mayhem. Yet its influence on art and on literature--including Orientalist painting and the architecture of cinemas, Washington Irving and Jorge Luis Borges--has been lasting and significant. As our guide to this architectural masterpiece, Robert Irwin allows us to fully understand the impact of the Alhambra.

The greatest artist of the 18th century, Francisco de Goya began his career as an apprentice to a local artist where one of his jobs was adding draperies and modesty items to nude figures in religious paintings; for this he was titled Reviser of Indecent Paintings. But by the age of 40, Goya had established himself as a leading Spanish artist. Goya simultaneously pursued a number of disparate projects, commissions he received from prestigious churches and royalty, as well as producing several lengthy series of lithographs to express his dislike of several subjects, notably Spanish high society and war. Brushing into controversy on several occasions, Goya threaded the political needle of alternating French and Spanish rule of his home country of Spain as well as successfully navigated the choppy waters of the Spanish Inquisition when it questioned the morality of La Maja Desnuda, one of his most famous paintings."

Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) is one of the classic texts of Western literature and the foundation of European fiction. Yet Cervantes himself remains an enigmatic figure. The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, first published in 2002, offers a comprehensive treatment of Cervantes' life and work, including his lesser known writing. The essays, by some of the most outstanding scholars in the field, cover the historical and political context of Cervantes' writing, his place in Renaissance culture, and the role of his masterpiece, Don Quixote, in the formation of the modern novel. They draw on contemporary critical perspectives to shed new light on Cervantes' work, including the 'Exemplary Novels', the plays and dramatic interludes, and the long romances, Galatea and Persiles. The volume provides useful supporting material for students; suggestions for further reading, a detailed chronology, a complete list of his published writings, an overview of translations and editions, and a guide to electronic resources.

"The cultures and religions that have shaped the Spain we know today are revealed over the course of a journey through its key cities – Madrid, Granada, Cordoba, Seville and Cartagena – in the company of historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. It’s a story packed with surprises and includes some of the great civilisations of the ancient world, as well as the most extraordinary characters. From Hannibal to the Caliphate, the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian, the Jewish Prime Ministers under Muslim rule to the expulsion of the Jews, the Inquisition and the rise of the Habsburgs: Charles V, Phillip II and empire, the Bourbons, Napoleon and ultimately Franco and beyond. We discover how this is a part of the world where the influence of previous cities and their respective faiths are evident at every turn."

Episode 1 - Conquest: Simon explores Spain's early years, its emergence as the battleground of empires and its golden age under the Cordoba Caliphate. (53 mins)
Episode 2 - Reconquest: Simon uncovers the truth about Spain's hero El Cid. He also investigates the horror of the Spanish Inquisition and in the process discovers an unsettling story about one of his own ancestors. (55 mins)
Episode 3 - Nation: Simon explores Spain's golden age under Philip II through to the Spanish Civil War and dictatorship under Franco, from which Spain has emerged as a modern democratic monarchy. (55 mins)

Spain was once home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews living together and flourishing. Their cultures and beliefs intertwined and the knowledge of the ancients was gathered and reborn, the very seeds of the Renaissance. Cities of Light explores the causes that destroyed the one civilization of pluralism and interfaith cooperation that for a few centuries lit the Dark Ages in Medieval Europe. (1hr 54 mins)

The extraordinary and moving story of the convulsive years of the Spanish Civil War (1935-1939) is explained as never seen before. Thanks to the latest digital techniques, this first-of-its-kind production in Spain has restored and colored over 150,000 spectacular frames and sequences in order to depict the great tragedy to take place in Spain. It was three years of fighting, destruction and death, which transformed the country forever and led up to the Second World War. (1h 36 mins)

They were ruthless men with unchecked power, controlling their people with an iron fist. Suppressing all dissent, they demanded absolute loyalty, jailing, or killing those who opposed them. They ruled by force of personality, but were plagued by secret fears and private demons. They were dictators - tyrants who shaped the twentieth century and left their mark on our own. From Mussolini to Saddam Hussein, dictators have shaped the world we live in. What drove their thirst for domination and control? How did they seize and wield power? What forces rose up against them or resisted them in secret? How did they finally come to the bitter end?

In this episode, learn how Francisco Franco used the tactics of colonial war to win control of Spain. Driven by a deeply conservative vision, he used torture, murder and incarceration to transform Spanish Society. (54 mins)

Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, following the death of Franco, amazed the world. Today, Spain amazes for the wrong reasons. Billions wasted in public works. Astronomical unemployment rates, peaking at 58.5% youth unemployment. A royal princess accused of tax fraud and over 600 politicians and public officials implicated in corruption cases. Meanwhile, the massive Catalan pro-independence movement is questioning the very essence of the state. Corruption is rife and transparency non-existent. As people realise the extent to which the old networks and affiliations, leading all the way back to the Franco years, continue to pull the threads, they are turning their back on the current system. New political parties like Podemos and Ciudadanos, with no ties to the transition years, are challenging the establishment. Polls predict that the outcome of the general elections will mark the end of the stagnating two-party system that has dominated the Spanish political landscape for the last four decades. Podemos are promising to reform all the state’s main institutions, including the monarchy, if they get a majority. One way or the other, Spain is facing an uncertain yet exciting future that may well bring about the end of the system that began forty years ago with the death of the dictator. Combining carefully selected archive, interviews with key players and analysis by well-connected observers and insiders, this film will give fresh insight into the state of mind of a country which seems headed for a new transition to a more profound democracy. (53 mins)

We know that Italy and Northern Europe are renowned for their art, but what about Spain? In this absorbing and original series, Spanish art gains centre stage as art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon goes on the road to reveal the fabulous art treasures of the country. Travelling from the south to the north he explores some of Europe's most important artists from Renaissance to Modernist - including Goya, Picasso, Dali, El Greco and Velasquez. And, going 'off the beaten track', he reveals rich insights into the culture and people who live and work with the greatest Spanish art and architecture every day. From Moorish art and the Islamic legacy on Spain and Europe to Modernism, Seville to Barcelona, food and wine, Andrew reveals that Spanish culture is every bit as rich as Italy's, with a more surprising edge.

Episode 1: The Moorish South (53 mins)
Episode 2: The Dark Heart (53 mins)
Episode 3: The Mystical North (52 mins)

This unique program describes the life and work of Antoni Gaudi, an extraordinary architect whose works are displayed throughout Barcelona. Presented in the guise of an autobiography, "Gaudi: Life and Works" invites us into the mind of a creative revolutionary. The film reveals Gaudi's unusual perspectives and his extraordinary architectural vision. It highlights his personality, his sensitivity and the images of his art. Revealed are the lesser known facts of his professional and personal life from his earliest works through his final days living in poverty in Barcelona. Upon graduation, the director of Gaudi's Architecture school said, "We have granted the title of architect to a genius or a madman." Gaudi was greatly inspired by nature and religion which manifested in his works including his most famous, the Sagrada Familia-a cathedral which he began at age 31 and remains unfinished to this day. "Gaudi: Life and Works" brilliantly brings to life perhaps the greatest architectural visionary of the century. (57 mins)

Spain's most revered twentieth-century poet and dramatist was born in 1899 and assassinated in 1936 during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Location filming in Spain traces the sources of his imagery and poetic imagination, and extracts from his poems, plays and letters are intermixed with the story of his life and the events leading up to his brutal murder. His biographer, lan Gibson, also contributes, together with surviving relatives, friends and witnesses. (1hr 15 mins)