‘Esta es la España de Franco’: Los años cincuenta del franquismo (1951–1959), Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco and Claudio Hernández Burgos (eds) (2020)

Review of: ‘Esta es la España de Franco’: Los años cincuenta del franquismo (1951–1959), Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco and Claudio Hernández Burgos (eds) (2020) Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 368 pp., ISBN 978-8-41340-110-2, pbk, €21.15

The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War, Giles Tremlett (2020)

Review of: The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War, Giles Tremlett (2020) London: Bloomsbury, 720 pp., ISBN 978-1-40885-398-6, h/bk, £30.00 ISBN 978-1-52664-454-1, e-book, £11.99

Narrativas precarias: Crisis y subjetividad en la cultura española actual, Christian Claesson (ed.) (2019)

Review of: Narrativas precarias: Crisis y subjetividad en la cultura española actual, Christian Claesson (ed.) (2019) Xixón: Hoja de Lata Editorial, 348 pp., ISBN 978-8-41653-745-7, p/bk, €18.90

Everyday life under the PIDE: A quantitative survey on the relations between ordinary citizens and Salazar’s political police (1955–74)

This article examines the relations between Portuguese society and Salazar’s political police (PIDE) from the perspective of the everyday lives of ordinary citizens – in contrast to the small minority of oppositionists that has so far monopolized the attention of historians. It is based on a quantitative survey of 400 respondents in four separate locations across Portugal and addresses two main research questions: To what extent did the sample of ordinary citizens experience the PIDE as a disruptive influence on their daily lives? Was the PIDE ‘normalized’ by them as part of the framework of everyday life? The data analysis calls upon the inputs of the international bibliography of everyday life under dictatorship and critically engages with the existing historiography of the PIDE.

An attempt to relieve oppression through the difficult paths of translation between Catalan and Spanish: The case of Avel·lí Artís-Gener

In the uneasy context of the Francoist regime, some authors tried to alleviate the difficult cultural situation through creation and translation. This is the case of Avel·lí Artís-Gener, commonly known as Tísner, a Catalan writer who was exiled to Mexico for more than twenty years. Translation from Spanish into Catalan played a major role in Tísner’s efforts to keep Catalan culture alive, and this article presents the major translation initiatives in this language combination throughout the twentieth century in order to provide enough context to give Artís-Gener’s endeavours their real weight. In Mexico, he wrote his most famous novel, Paraules d’Opoton el Vell (‘Words of Opoton the elder’), which describes the imagined ‘discovery’ of Europe by the Aztecs and creates a bond between the fate of the Nahuatl and the Catalan people under the yoke of Spanish imperialism. In 1992 Artís-Gener decided that the novel had to be retranslated into Spanish and undertook that task himself. In addition, Tísner translated major Latin American authors from Spanish into Catalan, an experience that gave him the chance to regain control of the language imposed by the Francoist regime and use it as a form of relief from the political oppression.

Festive literature in Catalan as a space of cultural resistance: The Valencian magazine Pensat i Fet (1912–72) during the Spanish post-war period

The magazine Pensat i Fet (1912–72), which was published every year before the Fallas festival and included a wide range of texts and pictures related to it, had been an important element in the dissemination of literature and culture in Catalan and the agenda of valencianism among wide sectors of Valencian society. Until 1936 – especially during the years of the Second Spanish Republic – the magazine explicitly opted for valencianism, for example, advocating for the agreement that would make the statute of autonomy possible. However, from 1940 onwards it became a true bastion of cultural resistance. So, the magazine maintained a literary use of Catalan language in diverse registers, strongly satirized the Castillianization of society, was able to express a valencianist spirit in a variety of ways, incorporated elements of social criticism through popular satire and accommodated very diverse authors from the Valencian literary field and from other Catalan-speaking regions. In this article, attention will be paid to the way in which the magazine manages to articulate these gestures, albeit not without trouble with censorship, throughout the first decade of Franco’s Regime, that is, between 1939 and 1950.

Imaginar Iberia: Tiempo, espacio y nación en el siglo XIX en España y Portugal, César Rina Simón (2020)

Review of: Imaginar Iberia: Tiempo, espacio y nación en el siglo XIX en España y Portugal, César Rina Simón (2020) Granada: Comares, 191 pp., ISBN 978-8-41369-013-1, p/bk, €19

Tras las huellas del terrorismo en Euskadi: Justicia restaurativa, convivencia y reconciliación, Annabel Martín and M.ª Pilar Rodríguez (eds) (2019)

Review of: Tras las huellas del terrorismo en Euskadi: Justicia restaurativa, convivencia y reconciliación, Annabel Martín and M.ª Pilar Rodríguez (eds) (2019) Madrid: Editorial Dykinson, 179 pp., ISBN 978-8-41324-346-7, h/bk, €17.10, ISBN 978-8-41324-390-0, e/bk, €13.50