"...con este libro no pretendo otra cosa que dejar constancia de unas vivencias y unos hechos que a mí me parecen interesantes dentro del contexto de la guerra civil española, sobre la que tanto se ha escrito, a pesar de lo cual, aún quedan por decir infinidad de cosas que se derivan de lo referido a esos episodios que, sin duda alguna, constituyen uno de los capítulos más nefastos de la historia de España. Manuel López Lacárcel"
Claudette, es una chica del área de Burdeos que estudia en París. Conoce a Rubén, un joven cadete mexicano de la academia de la Asociación Internacional de Policía en Francia, AIPOL. Le cuenta la historia de la granja vitivinícola de su familia. Como su bisabuelo tiene que luchar contra los alemanes durante la Primera Guerra Mundial y su abuelo hace lo mismo 20 años después, en la Segunda Guerra Mundial contra la Alemania nazi de Hitler. Para después sucumbir durante la crisis del petróleo en 1973. Rubén sabe de una organización criminal internacional a gran escala que se dedica al robo, falsificación y venta fraudulenta de obras de arte desaparecidas. La historia, la ficción, el romance y la aventura, se funden en esta novela llena de intrigas y emoción, donde el lector se siente aprisionado desde la primera página.
Madrid became one of the key symbols of Republican resistance to General Franco during the Spanish Civil War following the Nationalists' failure to take the city in the winter of 1936-7. Yet despite the defiant cries of 'No pasarán', they did eventually pass on 28 March 1939. This book examines the consequences in Madrid of Franco's unconditional victory in the Spanish Civil War. Using recently available archival material, this study shows how the punishment of the vanquished was based on a cruel irony - Republicans, not the military rebels of July 1936, were held responsible for the fratricidal conflict. Military tribunals handed out sentences for the crime of 'military rebellion'; mere passivity towards the Nationalists before 1939 was not only made a civil offence under the Law of Political Responsibilities but could cause dismissal from work; and freemasons and Communists, specifically blamed for the Civil War, were criminalized by decree in March 1940. However, contrary to much that has been written on the subject, the post-war Francoist repression was not exterminatory. Genocide did not take place in post-war Madrid. While a minimum of 3113 judicial executions took place between 1939 and 1944, death sentences were largely based on accusations of participation in 'blood crimes' that occured in Madrid in 1936. Moreover, and unlike most other accounts of the Francoist political violence, this book is concerned with the question of when and why mass repression came to an end. It shows that the sheer numbers of cases opened against Republican 'rebels', and the use of complex pre-war bureaucratic procedures to process them, produced a crisis that was only resolved by decisions taken by the Franco regime in 1940-1 to abandon much of the repressive system. By 1944, mass repression had come to an end.
This collection of critical essays addresses literary discourses on the mobility of women writers in various Atlantic regions of Europe. These literary systems (Ireland, Galicia, and Wales) experienced a rebirth in the second half of the twentieth century through their respective modern cultural artefacts, and the first decades of the present century have seen new research exploring emergent literatures in Europe, new European identities on the move, and even the dialogue between the various cultures of the Atlantic archipelago. This book centres on women writers and how they deal in their work with the issue of mobility. Authors and critics have tended to analyse travel by focusing on the transgression of patriarchal models of Western societies by white, middle-class women, these previously being mainly restricted to the private sphere, as well as on postcolonial issues with ethno- and Euro-centric slants. Notions of the construction of otherness are at stake here, in that even white women may be considered as belonging to a different ethnic group when they are migrants, thus showing how vulnerable and dependent women can be when isolated in a different environment. The narrative of history as progress may also be challenged in the twenty-first century by visions of nomadic women at risk of being displaced, both in their homeland and abroad.
