News

Friday, December 21, 2018

International Journal of Iberian Studies 31.3 is now available

Intellect is pleased to announce that the International Journal of Iberian Studies 31.3 is now available! For more information about the issue, click here >> https://bit.ly/2ByZPo6

Content

Martyrs, memory and misrepresentation: The Spanish Catholic Church, religious persecution and the Spanish Civil War
Authors: Maria Thomas 

This article explores the ways in which the victims of anticlerical violence during the Spanish Civil War have been represented and remembered by the Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy and Catholic hagiographers, examining the period from the Spanish Civil War up to the present day. It sustains that the discourse of martyrdom forged by the Catholic Church during the Civil War and the Dictatorship played a crucial role in legitimating the rebel war effort and the Franco Dictatorship, and in justifying repression against those associated with the Second Republic. It argues that the key tenets of the martyrdom discourse survived the Transition to Democracy and continue to characterize present-day Spanish ecclesiastical discourse. Against this backdrop, a re-evaluation of the Spanish episcopate’s assertions that the martyrs of the Civil War are non-political symbols of reconciliation between Spaniards is necessary.

Post-2008 Spanish migration to Argentina: Just ‘weathering the storm’?
Authors: Romina Miorelli And Lara Manóvil 

Following the 2008 economic crisis, many Spaniards left their country in search of jobs and opportunities abroad. By 2014, of the more than two million Spaniards living abroad, the majority of those outside the European Union and the United States of America – 400,000 of them – were living in Argentina. By focusing on testimonies published in Argentine and Spanish newspapers and complementing them with an analysis of selected life histories, this article explores whether those migrating from Spain to Argentina were in search of a new home or, rather, of a temporary solution while ‘weathering the storm’. The article argues that the answer is to be found beyond economic factors and shows how these migrants’ decisions and experiences were also strongly shaped by non-economic factors, especially the social networks that had developed out of previous migration waves between Spain and Argentina.

Intensive agriculture under plastic in Andalusia (Spain): A production model in question

Authors: Emma Martín Díaz And Alicia Reigada 


At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Andalusian agriculture is at the centre of a confrontation between those who continue to define it, sheltered behind discourses on modernity, and those who argue its condition as an enclave economy. Our analysis shows, however, how the new scenario of a global agri-food system, bisected by discourses and practices related to ‘quality’, ‘safety’ and ‘sustainability’, has also impacted on the experience of intensive agriculture, redefining and making more complex approaches to agricultural modernization. This article looks at intensive agriculture under plastic in the two main areas of agricultural export in Andalusia (strawberry production in Huelva and fruit and vegetable production in Almeria). It begins with an analysis of the factors and dynamics involved in the process of agricultural intensification and the social sectors involved. Subsequently, it analyses the evolution of the production strategies followed to achieve social reproduction of the model and the contradictions, costs and limitations of that model. In the conclusions, we place the model under question and point to the need for changes that will alter the very foundations that sustain it.

Fernanda Jacobsen and the Scottish Ambulance Unit during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39)
Authors: Linda Palfreeman 

When Civil War broke out in Spain in July 1936, the Republic made a worldwide plea for humanitarian assistance. Many thousands of people around the world rallied to the call, the Scottish Ambulance Unit among them. The only woman in the twenty-strong team was the unit’s commandant, Fernanda Jacobsen. She would remain at the unit’s helm on each of its successive expeditions to Spain, spanning a period of roughly two years, from September 1936 to July 1938. Despite its tremendous and sustained humanitarian contribution in and around the besieged Spanish capital of Madrid, the Scottish unit has not received the recognition afforded similar enterprises in the now vast literature on the Spanish Civil War. This article will examine the possible reasons for this. It will discuss previously unexplored documentary evidence and re-examine existing records in an attempt to shed light on the causes of internal struggles in the unit that led, eventually, to the resignation of some of its members.

Book Reviews
Authors: Margaret Anne Clarke And Margarida Rendeiro And Duncan Wheeler And Kathryn Crameri And José M. Magone And Wan Sonya Tang 
  • Salazar: Portugal e o Holocausto, Irene Flunser Pimentel and Claúdia Ninhos (2013)
  • A História da PIDE, Irene Flunser Pimentel (2011)
  • A Cada Um O Seu Lugar: A Política Feminina do Estado Novo, Irene Flunser Pimentel (2011)
  • The Making of Modern Portugal, Luís Trindade (ed.) (2013)
  • Social Movements and the Spanish Transition: Building Citizenship in Parishes, Neighbourhoods, Schools and the Countryside, Tamar Groves, Nigel Townson, Inbal Ofer and Antonio Herrera (2017)
  • The Rise of Catalan Independence: Spain’s Territorial Crisis, Andrew Dowling (2018)
  • Iberian Elites and the EU: Perceptions towards the European Integration Process in Political and Socioeconomic Elites in Portugal and Spain, Miguel Jerez-Mir, José Real-Dato and Rafael Vázquez-García (eds) (2016)
  • Historia de lo Fantástico en la Cultura Española Contemporánea (1900–2015), David Roas (dir.) (2017)