Confronted by a complex new society, nineteenth-century Spaniards wrestled with how to envisage their lives. From trying to be universal through to acting as a cultural entrepreneur, this volume explores the possibilities and uncertainties that unfolded in their reconfigured world
The Op-Ed Novel follows a clutch of globally renowned Spanish novelists who swept into the political sphere via the pages of El País. Their literary sensibility transformed opinion journalism, and their weekly columns changed their novels, which became venues for speculative historical claims, partisan political projects, and intellectual argument.
An investigation into how Larra (pseudonym Figaro) exposes the power relations that exist between and among individuals and the classes that form "society," this work provides a close reading in a postmodern vein of the satirical writer's duly famous articles penned- and published mostly between March 1835 and the summer of 1836. Casting light on the development of Larra's thought on power relations at this critical stage of his political life, this study offers a chronological, step-by-step analysis of the evolution of Larra's thoughts on power and politics.
The death of General Francisco Franco in November of 1975 ended thirty-six years of fascist-style dictatorship in Spain. The subsequent transition to liberal parliamentary government was remarkably smooth, particularly when compared to the recent difficulties experienced by other states, such as the former Soviet Republics and Eastern Europe. Ortiz traces Spain's success back to the development of a liberal tradition and a public sphere in the last decades of the 19th century during the Restoration period. He uses this era as a test case to demonstrate that liberal practices can develop even within a political situation where state institutions and the social infrastructure do not necessarily support them. Paper Liberals dispels the notion that Western Europe ends at the Pyrenees and argues instead that, while on the periphery, Spain should not be excluded from the mainstream of European history. Clarifying a period in contemporary Spanish history that has been largely misunderstood, this study underscores the importance of the Spanish example as a comparative model to the countries customarily thought of as the European center (Britain, France, and Germany). Ortiz examines the formation and expansion of liberal political culture during the Regency of Maria Christina from 1885 to 1902, and he details the pivotal role of the Spanish press, which dominated the public sphere of Regency Spain, as the vehicle for this remarkable transformation.
This book analyses royal education in nineteenth-century, constitutional Spain. Its main subjects are Isabel II (1830- 1904), Alfonso XII (1857-1885) and Alfonso XIII (1886-1941) during their time as monarchs-in-waiting. Their upbringing was considered an opportunity to shape the future of Spain, reflected the political struggles that emerged during the construction of a liberal state, and allowed for the modernisation of the monarchy. The education of heirs to the throne was taken seriously by contemporaries and assumed wider political, social and cultural significance. This volume is structured around three powerful groups which showed an active interest, influenced, and significantly shaped royal education: the court, the military, and the public. It throws new light on the position of the Spanish monarchy in the constitutional state, its ability to adapt to social, political, and cultural change, and its varied sources of legitimacy, power, and attraction.
La Historia Social de las Instituciones Punitivas está necesitada en España de encuentro y debate, de confrontación y colaboración entre investigadores e investigadoras. Solo así logrará hacerse visible e inteligible como tendencia historiográfica y sobre todo como apuesta teórico-metodológica, porque de hecho ya es más que creíble como práctica historiográfica. Aquí, en este libro, junto a los logros también se perfilan las carencias y los retos más acuciantes. Lejos de buscar una autonomía extemporánea, la Historia Social de las Instituciones Punitivas quiere buscar su propia viabilidad a base de intersecciones y buenas mezclas. Esos objetivos se planteaba el Grupo de Estudio sobre la Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas (GEHPIP) ―un equipo interuniversitario y con sede en la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM)― al organizar lo que de forma homónima decidió titular I Congreso Internacional sobre Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas, celebrado en Ciudad Real entre el 10 y el 12 de abril de 2013. El libro electrónico que aquí se presenta es una buena muestra de lo que allí se comunicó y discutió. Social History of Punitive Institutions in Spain needs meetings and discussions, comparison and collaboration between researchers. Only then it will become visible and intelligible as a historiographical trend and, above all, as a theoretical-methodological hope, because in fact, now it is more than conceivable as a historiographical practice. Here in this book are outlined, along with the achievements, the shortcomings and the most pressing challenges. Far from seeking an extemporaneous autonomy, Social History of Punitive Institutions wants to try to find its own feasibility based on intersections and good mixings. Those objectives were considered by the Study Group about History of Prison and Punitive Institutions (Grupo de Estudio sobre la Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas, GEHPIP) –an interuniversity team and with central office at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM)– when organising what it decided to name in an homonymous way 1st International Congress on History of Prison and Punitive Institutions (I Congreso Internacional sobre Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas), held in Ciudad Real (Spain) from 10 to 12 April 2013. The electronic book here presented is a good example of what it was told and discussed there.
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.
Christine Arkinstall’s historical and literary study of female freethinking intellectuals in fin-de-siècle Spain examines the contributions of three intellectuals, Amalia Domingo Soler, Angeles López de Ayala, and Belén Sárraga, to the development of feminist consciousness and democracy. These women wrote for, edited, and published radical and feminist periodicals that, until now, have been left unstudied. This significant gap in the scholarship has left us without an accurate sense of Spanish women’s involvement in the public realm. Spanish Female Writers and the Freethinking Press, 1879–1926 recovers the lost history and literary contributions these women made to the so-called Generation of 1898. Using their extensive published works, Arkinstall not only illuminates the lives of Domingo Soler, López de Ayala, and Sárraga, but traces the connections between feminism, freethinking, republicanism, freemasonry, anarchism, and socialism. By placing these women’s work in the broader literary, social, and political context of the period, Arkinstall’s study makes a major contribution to our understanding of the central role of women in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century democracy in Spain.
This book examines how and why sport in general, and football in particular, entered the country and developed successfully between 1890 and the 1920s, while placing that growth within the context of Spain’s larger historical experience. The introduction of sport in the late 19th century permanently changed the day-to-day lives of thousands of Spaniards. Initially, the country’s growing urban middle-classes embraced the new activity as they built community identities and were introduced to it through economic and educational connections to foreigners. To justify this, these proponents argued that the adoption of physical education and sport would physically regenerate the nation. In response, well-rounded sporting communities grew, developed medical arguments, and even debated the activity’s appropriateness for different groups like women. As sport spread, it produced the first football clubs around the turn of the century. Subsequently, in the 1910s and early 1920s, football established the structural institutions, like stadiums, stars, regulatory bodies, and a press, that enabled its rapid expansion as a mass consumer activity in the late 1920s. Regeneration through Sport looks at how this process embedded the sport within the national culture and established itself as a politically neutral activity before the Spanish Second Republic, allowing it to become almost ubiquitous today. This book will appeal to researchers, students and scholars alike who are interested in the history of sport, Spain, and European history.