Don't just see the sights—get to know the people. In the popular imagination Spain conjures up a picture of rapacious conquistadores, fiery flamenco dancers, and brilliant artists. All true enough but how closely does everyday life in modern Spain conform to these dramatic stereotypes? Culture Smart! Spain explores the complex human realities of contemporary Spanish life. It describes how Spain s history and geography have created both strongly felt regional differences and shared values and attitudes. It reveals what the Spaniards are like at home, and in business, how they socialize, and how to build lasting relationships with them. The better you understand the Spanish people, the more you will be enriched by your experience of this vital, warm, and varied country where the individual is important, and the enjoyment of life is paramount. Have a richer and more meaningful experience abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on history, values, attitudes, and traditions will help you to better understand your hosts, while tips on etiquette and communicating will help you to navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

For many, Spain conjures up images of rapacious conquistadors, the unworldly Don Quixote, brave bullfighters, fiery flamenco dancers, and brilliant artists. All true enough--but how does the reality conform to these stereotypes? The Spanish people are certainly distinctive. Visitors are often astounded by their vitality, entranced by their friendliness, and driven mad by their frequent indulgence of their friends and relatives. They tend to be proud, passionate, spontaneous, generous, and loyal; they can also be procrastinators, individualistic to a fault, suspicious, and, not least, very noisy! Spain has had a major impact on European and world history. This is the nation that enjoyed a golden age of enlightenment, that discovered America and gathered in its riches, and that left the great legacy of its culture and its language, today spoken by over four hundred million people. In the early twentieth century, Spain suffered a bitter civil war and a stultifying dictatorship, from which it emerged in the late seventies to become again an integral part of Europe and the international arena. Culture Smart! Spain explores the complex human realities of modern Spanish life. It describes how history and geography have created both regional differences and shared values and attitudes. It reveals what the Spaniards are like at home, and in business, and how they socialize. It prepares you for their boundless energy and widespread religious devotion; and offers practical tips on how to behave and make the very most of your visit. The better you understand the Spanish people, the more you will be enriched by your experience of this vital, warm, and varied country--where the individual is important, and the enjoyment of life is paramount.

Modern Spain is a revelation in this up-to-date overview. Stanton vibrantly describes the startling variety of landscape, people, and culture that make up Spain today. Included are a context chapter and others on religion, customs, media, cinema, literature, performing arts, and visual arts. Students of Spanish and a general audience will be rewarded with engrossing insights into what writer Ernest Hemingway called the very best country of all. Spain is a modern European nation, yet Spaniards are fiercely tied to their individual towns and regions—with their distinct social customs, dialects or languages, foods, landscape, and lifestyles—more than to a united country. Culture and Customs of Spain conveys the extremes, such as the hard-working Catalan contrasted to the leisurely paced Castilian, coexisting in first and third world conditions, and the love/hate relationship with the Catholic Church. Spain's institutions are described, and its contributions to the world—from unparalleled literature and cuisine to flamenco and filmmaker Pedro Almodovar—are celebrated. A chronology and glossary complement the text.

Italy delights and stimulates with its magnificent cities and monuments, its stunningly beautiful landscapes, the glory of its art and architecture, the richness and variety of its food, the elegance of its design and fashion, and the vitality and charm of its people. Italian style and culture have been exported all over the world. What is it like at home? Almost ten years after the 2008 banking crisis, Italy struggles to maintain its standard of living, the stability of the currency, and its ability to provide jobs for its school leavers and university graduates, many of whom now leave to work elsewhere in Europe. In addition, the influx of refugees from southeast Europe and across the Mediterranean is putting pressure on both its security and its economy. How are traditional Italian society and politics changing to deal with these challenges, with its most famous political personality of the last ten years, the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, still apparently waiting in the wings? The Italians are the most European-minded of nations, having emerged from a long history of regional fragmentation." Culture Smart! Italy" introduces you to their history and culture and offers an insider s guide to their daily lives, passions, and preoccupations. This is your chance to get to know them better."

Investigates the Spanish people and culture, and examines how Spaniards and Americans can interact with each other successfully.

Costa Rica is renowned for its tropical beauty, the warmth and charm of the "Ticos"—its people's own name for themselves—and its political stability. This "Switzerland of the Americas" is widely regarded as an oasis of democracy in turbulent Central America. Since the first edition of Culture Smart! Costa Rica was published in 2005, however, there have been some important changes and, with rapid economic development, some growing pains. Over the past few years there has been a movement of population to the towns of the Central Valley. Higher education is now the norm for young Ticos, and the middle class has expanded—but so has the gap between rich and poor. Tourism took a dive after the 2009 recession, and the national debt has grown, while the arrival of multinationals and significant Chinese investment has been welcomed. Unemployment has risen, people are prepared to go on strike more readily, and there is a general disillusionment with politicians. In the face of mounting difficulties the Ticos remain remarkably peaceable, relaxed, and fun-loving. Their enthusiasm for life is seen as much in their passion for soccer as in their demonstrations in support of human and political rights. Culture Smart! Costa Rica explores and explains the complex human realities of modern Costa Rican life. Armed with this information, you will be better equipped to understand your hosts and to enjoy your visit to this beguiling and beautiful country to the full.

“Cool Britannia” is alive and well today. British culture is at the top of its game—in fashion, popular music, art and entertainment, science and technology, new inventions, and in the rediscovered skills and excellence in engineering that make it Germany’s leading trading partner in Europe. As a family of nations, the British are inventive, reflective, good humored, funny, focused, and tenacious. Today’s multicultural Britain is managing the challenges of integrating minorities in a way that remains true to its fundamental values and beliefs as a fair and open society, one that continues to see itself as a model for others to follow. Since the first edition of this guide appeared, Britain has faced huge and accelerated change in its cultural, economic, and political life. In ten years immigration has added a further five million to its population. Confidence in its banks and regulatory structures was shaken by the global financial crisis. The very unity of the United Kingdom was tested in 2014 in the referendum on Scottish independence, and although those wishing to retain the Union triumphed, it prompted a debate about national identities and rights, and the prospect of a new “fairer” settlement for the English. While the desire of Scottish nationalists for independence remains as strong as ever, the surge in support for the UK Independence Party (which wants Britain to leave the EU) may well result in a new form of power sharing in parliament. This revised and updated edition of Culture Smart! Britain examines the impact of these issues on British society and guides the reader through the quirks, customs, values, and changing ways of British life. It is a must-read for the record-breaking numbers of visitors coming to these islands.

This is a travel guide to Spain which explores the culture and etiquette of the country.

An open-minded and clear-eyed reexamination of the cultural artifacts of Franco's Spain True, false, or both? Spain's 1939-75 dictator, Francisco Franco, was a pioneer of water conservation and sustainable energy. Pedro Almodóvar is only the most recent in a line of great antiestablishment film directors who have worked continuously in Spain since the 1930s. As early as 1943, former Republicans and Nationalists were collaborating in Spain to promote the visual arts, irrespective of the artists' political views. Censorship can benefit literature. Memory is not the same thing as history. Inside Spain as well as outside, many believe-wrongly-that under Franco's fascist dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or shown. In his groundbreaking new book, Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936, Jeremy Treglown argues that oversimplifications like these of a complicated, ambiguous actuality have contributed to a separate falsehood: that there was and continues to be a national pact to forget the evils for which Franco's side (and, according to this version, his side alone) was responsible. The myth that truthfulness was impossible inside Franco's Spain may explain why foreign narratives (For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homage to Catalonia) have seemed more credible than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de España was, as its Spanish name asserts, Spain's own war, and in recent years the country has begun to make a more public attempt to "reclaim" its modern history of fascism. How it is doing so, and the role played in the process by notions of historical memory, are among the subjects of this wide-ranging and challenging book. Franco's Crypt reveals that despite state censorship, events of the time were vividly recorded. Treglown looks at what's actually there-monuments, paintings, public works, novels, movies, video games-and considers, in a captivating narrative, the totality of what it shows. The result is a much-needed reexamination of a history we only thought we knew.