The strategic ownership of femenine commitment: transgendered identifications in some feminine militant falangist’s work

Este estudio muestra el control de la imagen de la mujer en las organizaciones falangistas durante la República Española a través de los relatos. Concretamente, se resalta la retórica falangista de la entrega. Frente a la insistencia falangista en la virilidad y la verticalidad fálica pudo coexistir una retórica del servicio y de la entrega – retórica ésta que se aplicaba igualmente al hombre y a la mujer.This paper shows woman's image control through stories in Falangistas organizations, during Spanish Republic. Falangista rhetoric of devotion is stood out. In front of the Falangista insistence in manliness and in phallus uprightness, it could coexist the rhetoric of service and devotion, applied equally to man and woman

Cinema and the Mediation of Everyday Life in 1940s and 1950s Spain

This essay discusses the AHRB-funded collaborative project ‘An Oral History of Cinema-going in 1940s and 1950s Spain’ undertaken by the author with co-researchers in Spain and the US. It argues a case for studying popular cinema – neglected by film historians in Spain – and popular audiences in particular, stressing the need to be attentive to the agency of spectators and to the ways in which cinema-going intersects with everyday life. The essay is particularly interested in the positive meanings of escapism for Spanish spectators of Hollywood cinema in the first two decades after the Spanish Civil War, at a time of severe political repression and economic hardship under the Franco Dictatorship; and in how, at the same time, watching Hollywood movies introduced consumerist values in anticipation of the regime’s later overt adoption of capitalist modernization. The role of women spectators becomes particularly important here, given that, as home-makers, they felt the effects of economic hardship particularly keenly, while at the same time they were the principal targets of the consumerist values disseminated by Hollywood

Cinema and the Mediation of Everyday Life in 1940s and 1950s Spain

This essay discusses the AHRB-funded collaborative project ‘An Oral History of Cinema-going in 1940s and 1950s Spain’ undertaken by the author with co-researchers in Spain and the US. It argues a case for studying popular cinema – neglected by film historians in Spain – and popular audiences in particular, stressing the need to be attentive to the agency of spectators and to the ways in which cinema-going intersects with everyday life. The essay is particularly interested in the positive meanings of escapism for Spanish spectators of Hollywood cinema in the first two decades after the Spanish Civil War, at a time of severe political repression and economic hardship under the Franco Dictatorship; and in how, at the same time, watching Hollywood movies introduced consumerist values in anticipation of the regime’s later overt adoption of capitalist modernization. The role of women spectators becomes particularly important here, given that, as home-makers, they felt the effects of economic hardship particularly keenly, while at the same time they were the principal targets of the consumerist values disseminated by Hollywood

1873-1874, End of a Century?: Time and Space in Valera's Pepita Jiménez, Ros de Olano's Jornadas de retorno, and Alarcón's El sombrero de tres picos and La Alpujarra

This article argues for the existence of a literature of the first Spanish Republic in the early 1870s. Valera's Pepita Jimenez makes sense in relation to this literature, rather than in comparison with 'Realism'. The literature of the first republic is distinguished by two facets: an ongoing dialogue with Ros de Olano's experiments in simultaneous compression and extension of form; and a belief that the nineteenth-century revolutionary spirit of the age has reached a critical end point, and needs reinvention that leads to Restoration politics

Pleasure and historical memory in Spanish Gothic film

This essay argues that scholars of Spanish culture are too ready to assume a reading of Gothic texts in terms of historical memory, or the rectification of injustices that occurred during the Franco era. It suggests that there has been a neglect of the question of the pleasures of reading or viewing the Gothic, even though these pleasures may well undermine the desire to do retrospective justice to the victims of Franco. Using as a case study the film Insensibles (Juan Carlos Medina 2012) this essay proposes some examples of pleasures that serve to disrupt the recuperation of historical memory, and calls for better awareness of the pleasures of genre in analysing relevant texts

Liberal governmentality in Spain: bodies, minds, and the medical construction of the “outsider,” 1870–1910

This paper traces the fragility of the subject in the period extending from the aftermath of the Sexenio through to the early twentieth century. In particular, two case studies are focused upon: the question of gender “deviance” and the figure of the genius, in order to understand how medicine participated in the construction of “outsider” identities within the context of the emerging liberal order. How did liberal rationales exclude or curtail certain wayward expressions of identity and subjectivity? What consequences did the marking of “excessive” figures or outsiders have for notions of inclusiveness and citizenship within the late-nineteenth-century liberal order? By concentrating primarily on medical texts and journals published during the period, this study builds on existing research to tease out answers to these questions

Post-Franco Theatre

In the multiple realms and layers that comprise the contemporary Spanish theatrical landscape, “crisis” would seem to be the word that most often lingers in the air, as though it were a common mantra, ready to roll off the tongue of so many theatre professionals with such enormous ease, and even enthusiasm, that one is prompted to wonder whether it might indeed be a miracle that the contemporary technological revolution – coupled with perpetual quandaries concerning public and private funding for the arts – had not by now brought an end to the evolution of the oldest of live arts, or, at the very least, an end to drama as we know it

Emerging trends in reassessing translation, conflict, and memory

New Approaches on Translation, Conflict, and Memory: Narratives of the Spanish Civil War and the Dictatorship is a collection of essays that endeavours to establish a new dialogue between translation, conflict, and memory studies. Focusing on cultural representations of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Dictatorship, it explores the significance and the effect of translation within Spain and beyond. Drawing on fictional and non-fictional texts, reports from war zones, and audiovisual productions, the contributors to this volume examine the scope of translation in transmitting the conflict and the dictatorship from a contemporary perspective. Narratives produced during and after the Civil War and the dictatorship both in Spain and abroad have led to new debates arising from the reassessment of a conflict that continues to resonate

Revisiting ‘place’ in a realist novel: ‘Thinking space’ in Galdós’s Torquemada en la hoguera (1889)

Departing from the premise that Galdós’s close engagement with space and place deserves to be at the forefront of scholarly attention, this article provides an in-depth study of their significance in Torquemada en la hoguera. It begins by analysing the relationship between the novel’s locations and the real world, demonstrating that the author codes the city of Madrid to express social concerns and promote reader engagement. It then proceeds to examine the public and private spheres, before highlighting the “place of the imagination” in the novel. It reveals that, as in Galdós’s press articles, reality is used as a springboard in Torquemada en la hoguera and, drawing upon recent theories, it posits that places serve as a framework for engaging readers with contemporary concerns and as an imaginative springboard for Galdós. They trigger what is effectively a “thinking space” for the author and it is through unravelling their significance that we can fully appreciate Galdós’s psychological sensitivity, the novel’s modernity, its symbolic value, and imaginative depth. The article concludes by proposing that Galdós’s works deserve to be re-examined as “Novels of the Geographical Imagination” and urges readers to revisit the significance of space and place therein