Las amarguras de un intelectual republicano en Checoslovaquia

The historian, journalist and professor from La Coruña Francisco Fariña, of whom we now celebrate the 130th anniversary of his birth, came to Czechoslovakia in 1933. He collaborated with the Spanish and Ibero-American Institute and the Schools of Languages of Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University Masaryk in Brno. His students played a key role in Spanish and Ibero-American studies becoming a university degree. The political situation in Spain and professional jealousy clouded his stay in the Central European country and forced him to exile in Germany, where he died in 1955.

Three varieties of Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Rule by the experts, the people, the leader

Neoliberalism and authoritarianism are intimately connected, as is demonstrated by the existence of a growing body of literature on ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’. This article provides a taxonomy of authoritarian neoliberalism and claims that it appears in three varieties – technocracy, populist nationalism, and traditional authoritarianism. Also, it proposes both an overview of the varieties and an analysis of three states as case studies. States are investigated as actors which strongly contribute to the neoliberal project amidst a more complex process of multilocalized and variegated neoliberalizations, which have to be incorporated into the comparative research. First, Italy is studied as a consolidated Western democracy which has been often governed by technocrats, independent, non-party professionals who have recurrently been in power since the 1990s, and within the frame of an increasingly technocratic European Union. Second, the paper concentrates on Hungary, a semi-peripheral Central European country which has become an epitome of a populist nationalism with increasingly authoritarian traits. Third, the paper focuses on Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Union republic with no significant experience of liberal democracy before independence, and a key example of the ‘traditional authoritarian’ variety. The three varieties, however, are sometimes combined and coexisting, and their evolution will be decisive for the future of capitalism and liberal democracy.

An academic study of research literature on Czech television: The dawn of taking TV seriously

In 2017 the first television studies university programme in the Czech Republic was officially opened at Palacký University in Olomouc. However, television has been a focus of Czech academics and television and film reviewers and practitioners for a long time. This review aims to introduce various forms of academic thinking about Czech and Czechoslovak television, published both in Czech and English. It distinguishes four academic and one insider position, based on institutional and disciplinary criteria. Additionally, the article points towards possible issues with trying to reflect on and teach television in a small, post-socialist East-Central European country where there is a limited number of original scholarly books, theoretical initiatives and translations of important texts from the field of TV studies. At the same time, the small size of the TV market, language barriers and the post-socialist heritage inform the local academic debate with specific research questions that have the potential of opening new perspectives on issues such as ideology, political power, mediated memory and globalisation.

Seaweed resources of Poland

Poland, a Central European country with a Baltic Sea coastline of 634 km, has no tradition of nearshore cultivation of seaweeds or utilization of this biomass. The Baltic is known for its eutrophication. Numerous attempts are being made to combat this phenomenon as well as to find applications for the beach-cast and free-floating macroalgae, which are a nuisance in many areas. Seaweed harvesting can mitigate eutrophication by the reduction of nutrients – especially nitrogen and phosphorus – in water. Collected biomass can be utilised in agriculture as biofertilisers and used as a valuable raw material for the manufacture of high-value macroalgal products, such as biostimulants of plant growth, feed additives, components of cosmetics, food additives or biogas as a form of renewable energy. The Baltic abounds in green macroalgae (Ulva sp. and Cladophora sp.) with brown (Ectocarpus sp., Pilayella sp., Fucus vesiculosus) and red algae (Vertebrata sp., Ceramium sp., Furcellaria sp.) occurring in much smaller quantities. These seaweeds are also of great interest as bioindicators of environmental pollution. The seaweeds in the southern Baltic Sea still represent an unexploited biomass and can be a huge source of innovation. New approaches towards macroalgal utilisation are in demand.

Unexpected Terrorists? Polish Links to ISIS

Poland is regarded as a country relatively free from Islamic terrorist threat. According to official statements, the four-level terrorism threat scale assessed the terrorism threat in Poland as low (‘zero’). The Islamic minority living in Poland is small and very specific, connected with the historical background of the country and well integrated. For years, relations with most of the Islamic countries were good, or even very good, until the beginning of the XX century when Poland got involved in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and became a member of the anti-ISIS coalition. That might have attracted the attention of Al-Qaeda and ISIS to the country and its citizens as possible targets of attacks. Surprisingly, 20 to 40 Polish citizens went to Iraq or Syria to fight as foreign fighters (FTFs). More than 10 per cent of Polish criminals wanted by the Interpol is charged with participation in the terrorist organization (ISIS). The article aims to present the relations between this Central European country and the jihadist terrorist organization and to reverse the common belief that Poland has no links to ISIS and no reasons to regard the organization as its serious problem.

Small Businesses in Cultural Tourism in a Central European Country

The aim of this article is to test the hypotheses whether the selected cultural and historical monuments and cultural events are an inspiration for tourists to visit. Our main objective is to determine whether a statistical relationship can be detected between the number of selected monuments and cultural events in Czech Republic and the number of its visitors. All analyzed data on this cultural destination was obtained from the statistics of NIPOS (The National Information and Consulting Centre for Culture between 2008 – 2017). Historical monuments that charge admission fees were statistically analyzed. SPSS will be used to calculate the correlation coefficient. Based on the results of H1 verification, there is no statistically significant difference between the number of monuments accessible to visitors for a fee and the average number of visitors per single historical monument. According to H2 verification, there is no statistically significant difference between the number of cultural events in historical monuments and the number. of visitors attending these cultural events. Cultural monuments and cultural events are one of the alternative motivations to attract tourists to the cities. If there is no improvement in tourism infrastructure, it will be very difficult to attract visitors.

Extraordinary variation in a simple song: No geographical patterns in initial phrase variation of the Yellowhammer, a passerine with pronounced dialects

Geographical variation of birdsong is used to study various topics from cultural evolution to mechanisms responsible for reproductive barriers or song acquisition. In species with pronounced dialects, however, patterns of variation in non-dialect parts of the song are usually overlooked. We focused on the individually variable initial phrase of the song of the Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella), a common Palearctic passerine which became a model species for dialect research. We used a quantitative method to compare the similarity of initial phrases from the repertoires of 237 males recorded at different spatial scales in a central European country covering all main dialect types. We hypothesized that patterns of initial phrase sharing and/or phrase similarity are affected by dialect boundaries and geographical proximity (i.e. that birds from the same dialect regions use more similar phrases or share them more often). Contrary to our expectations, initial phrase variation seems unrelated to dialects, as we did not find higher similarity either among recordings from the same dialect areas or among those from the same locality. Interestingly, despite the immense variability of phrase types detected (only 16% of 368 detected initial phrase types were shared between at least 2 males), a relatively high proportion of males (45%) was involved in sharing, and males using the same initial phrase were located anywhere from tens of meters to hundreds of kilometers apart. The patterns of variation suggest that precise copying during song learning as well as improvisation play important roles in forming individual repertoires in the Yellowhammer. Our data also confirm previous indications that the repertoires of Yellowhammer males (i.e. the composition of initial phrases) are individually unique and temporally stable. This makes the species a good candidate for individual acoustic monitoring, useful for detailed population or behavioral studies without the need for physical capture and marking of males.