The Spanish Civil War has had a profound and lasting impact on Britain. At least 2400 Britons volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic (of whom more than 500 died), while others provided medical assistance, visited Spain in delegations, or covered the Civil War as journalists. In this collection of three of his published articles and seven new essays, all based on primary research, Tom Buchanan sheds light on many facets of this complex relationship. The book's central themes are the impact of loss on families and communities, and the importance of Spain itself its history and culture in...

The Spanish Civil War has had a profound and lasting impact on Britain. At least 2400 Britons volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic (of whom more than 500 died), while others provided medical assistance, visited Spain in delegations, or covered the Civil War as journalists. In this collection of three of his published articles and seven new essays, all based on primary research, Tom Buchanan sheds light on many facets of this complex relationship. The book's central themes are the impact of loss on families and communities, and the importance of Spain itself its history and culture in...

This book looks at how Muslims in Spain have changed legislation linked to religious pluralism and immigration and have fortified Spain s frail history and practice of democracy since 1975. Spanish Muslims have achieved this through active civil engagement and a persistent struggle for rights and for status as immigrants and as citizens on par with ethnic Spaniards. Muslims have interacted with Spanish popular traditions, challenged Eurocentric historical narratives, and used Spanish concepts such as convivencia (peaceful coexistence) and arraigo (rootedness) to expand the prevailing...

This book is a new short history of Spain during a crucial period, the reign of Alfonso XIII (1902-1931). Traditionally, this has been seen as a time that epitomized the worst features of 'old Spain'. However, this study, in line with the most recent historiography, offers a new insight into the period as one that was actually characterized by extensive modernization in Spanish society and politics. Spain experienced many of the changes already in progress in other European countries, such as urbanization, industrialization, mass migration, the rise in literacy, secularization, and the...

Madrid's Forgotten Avant-Garde explores the role played by artists and intellectuals who constructed and disseminated various competing images of national identity that polarized Spanish society prior to the Civil War. The convergence of modern and essentialist discourses and practices, especially in literature and poetry--in what is conventionally called in Spanish letters the Generation of '27--created fissures between competing views of aesthetics and ideology that cut across political affiliation. Author Silvina Schammah Gesser exposes the paradoxes facing Madrid's cultural...

Based on first-hand diplomatic, political, and journalistic sources, most of which are previously unpublished, Mexico and the Spanish Civil War investigates the backing of the Second Republic by Mexico during the Spanish Civil War. This path-breaking account reveals the operations in Spain of Mexican workers, soldiers, artists, and intellectuals, such as later Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz and the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, as volunteers and propagandists for the Republican cause.

This book reveals the development, strategy and extraordinary success of Britain's secret services in Franco's Spain during the Second World War. The main claim of this study is that British pressure, exercised above all through their intelligence services, led Franco to distance himself from the Axis cause and eventually embrace that of the Allies. Starting from a virtually non-existent base, the British rapidly built up a complex intelligence network in Spain that stretched from Corunna to Barcelona and from Bilbao to Gibraltar. As Spain was a non-belligerent, spy networks - including those...

Following Spain's democratic transition during the late 1970s, political and business elites strategically exploited Spain's rich Islamic heritage in order to further projects of national redefinition, tourist promotion, and urban revitalization. Large and ornate mosques were built in several Spanish regions, and the State granted Muslim communities an extensive array of rights and privileges that was arguably without parallel in Europe. Toward the onset of the 21st century, however, tensions surrounding Islam's growing presence in Spain became increasingly common, especially in the...