This is the first complete reference book on Spanish history, life, and culture from prehistory to 1994 and the only book on Spain in English or Spanish that is organized by region and province. It is designed to assist students and interested readers in identifying and understanding regional and provincial history, economy, literature, art, music, social customs and cultural life, historic sites, and provincial cuisine (recipes included). Organized into entries on the 18 regions and subdivided into the 50 provinces, this one-stop reference makes gathering information on each region and province easy. A map of each region and photos accompany the text.

This book analyses the impact of Europeanization on domestic politics and the relationship between states and regions.

The Spanish Empire was a complex web of places and peoples. Through an expansive range of essays that look at Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, this volume brings a broad range of regions into conversation. The contributors focus on nuanced, comparative exploration of the processes and practices of creating, maintaining, and transforming cultural place making within pluralistic Spanish colonial communities. The Global Spanish Empire argues that patterned variability is necessary in reconstructing Indigenous cultural persistence in colonial settings. The volume’s eleven case studies include regions often neglected in the archaeology of Spanish colonialism. The time span under investigation is extensive as well, transcending the entirety of the Spanish Empire, from early impacts in West Africa to Texas during the 1800s. The contributors examine the making of a social place within a social or physical landscape. They discuss the appearance of hybrid material culture, the incorporation of foreign goods into local material traditions, the continuation of local traditions, and archaeological evidence of opportunistic social climbing. In some cases, these changes in material culture are ways to maintain aspects of traditional culture rather than signifiers of new cultural practices. The Global Spanish Empire tackles broad questions about Indigenous cultural persistence, pluralism, and place making using a global comparative perspective grounded in the shared experience of Spanish colonialism. Contributors Stephen Acabado Grace Barretto-Tesoro James M. Bayman Christine D. Beaule Christopher R. DeCorse Boyd M. Dixon John G. Douglass William R. Fowler Martin Gibbs Corinne L. Hofman Hannah G. Hoover Stacie M. King Kevin Lane Laura Matthew Sandra Montón-Subías Natalia Moragas Segura Michelle M. Pigott Christopher B. Rodning David Roe Roberto Valcárcel Rojas Steve A. Tomka Jorge Ulloa Hung Juliet Wiersema

Across Europe and beyond, economic woes in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 unleashed fundamental changes in politics, with new parties emerging and populism surging.

This edited volume highlights the geographies of six European Mediterranean countries: France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Greece. The book provides a balanced overview on what the geographers of these six countries have investigated and reflected in recent decades. This thematically arranged book takes into account the national differences of the authors, but also highlights the main contributions of Mediterranean geographies on a global scale. It reinforces a perception of common problems and debates in Southern Europe. This book appeals to the institutionalized geographical community of Mediterranean countries but also to a global audience of scholars of geography, territorial and spatial studies, social sciences and history.

Traces the origins of the complex system of devolution and regional home rule that currently shapes and directs the Spanish political process.

Ever since Ernest Hemingway popularized the fiesta de San Fermín with the publication of The Sun Also Rises in 1926, the world has been enthralled with the concept of running with the bulls. For millions, running with the bulls remains on their bucket list, and for Hemingway fans it is a lifelong dream. For Peter N. Milligan, it is a way of life. Part memoir and part travel guide, Bulls Before Breakfast recounts Milligan's many adventures in Pamplona, Spain. In his dozen years of visiting the fiesta de San Fermín, Milligan has run with the bulls over 70 times and accumulated stories both thrilling and terrifying. Bulls Before Breakfast is the definitive guide to Pamplona, its famed fiesta, and the surrounding Kingdom of Navarra. It is also a memoir of two brothers running with the bulls and exploring every corner of the city, the countryside, the mountains, the beaches, and the famed restaurants of the Basque hinterland. The book focuses on local knowledge, and the hidden mysteries of this closed, private culture and community. Milligan has slowly pried open this trove of secrets over the past twelve years, all while refining the art of getting between the horns of a massive, perfect Spanish killing machine, el toro bravo, and running for his life.

Insight Guides: all you need to inspire every step of your journey. An in-depth book, now with free app and eBook. Home to spectacular mountains, lush green valleys and a scenic coastline, Northern Spain is fast becoming a haven of green tourism. This new edition covers all the highlights, from the cultural Bilbao and elegant San Sebastian to the wine-growing region of La Rioja and the Picos de Europa mountain range Over 346 pages of insider knowledge from local experts In-depth on history and culture, from festivals and food and wine to the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela Enjoy special features on Basque games, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, country museums and the region's distinctive granary stores Includes innovative extras that are unique in the market - all Insight Guides to countries and regions come with a free eBook and app that's regularly updated with new hotel, bar, restaurant, shop and local event listings Invaluable maps, travel tips and practical information ensure effortless planning Inspirational colour photography throughout Inventive design makes for an engaging reading experience About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-colour print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks and apps to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

Unlike France and England, Spain has not been dominated by its capital, and the focus of its history shifts from city to city over the centuries, illuminating different features of the country's past. Toledo, Cordoba, Seville and Madrid have at various times managed to establish a political and cultural supremacy, Cadiz and Barcelona dominated the economy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Salanca housed one of the great universities of medieval Europe while Santiago became the second religious centre of Christendom. In CITIES OF SPAIN David Gilmour takes us on a journey from Visigothic kingdom and the Cordoban caliphate to the Madrid of today. The portrait of these cities both now and in the heyday reveal both their spirit and their significance, and allowed the reader an intimate view of one of Europe's most fascinating and intriguing countries.

From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Hispanic Monarchy was one of the largest and most diverse political communities known in history. At its apogee, it stretched from the Castilian plateau to the high peaks of the Andes; from the cosmopolitan cities of Seville, Naples, or Mexico City to Santa Fe and San Francisco; from Brussels to Buenos Aires and from Milan to Manila. During those centuries, Spain left its imprint across vast continents and distant oceans contributing in no minor way to the emergence of our globalised era. This was true not only in an economic sense-the Hispano-American silver peso transported across the Atlantic and the Pacific by the Spanish fleets was arguably the first global currency, thus facilitating the creation of a world economic system-but intellectually and artistically as well. The most extraordinary cultural exchanges took place in practically every corner of the Hispanic world, no matter how distant from the metropolis. At various times a descendant of the Aztec nobility was translating a Baroque play into Nahuatl to the delight of an Amerindian and mixed audience in the market of Tlatelolco; an Andalusian Dominican priest was writing the first Western grammar of the Chinese language in Fuzhou, a Chinese city that enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Spanish Philippines; a Franciscan friar was composing a piece of polyphonic music with lyrics in Quechua to be played in a church decorated with Moorish-style ceilings in a Peruvian valley; or a multi-ethnic team of Amerindian and Spanish naturalists was describing in Latin, Spanish and local vernacular languages thousands of medicinal plants, animals and minerals previously unknown to the West. And, most probably, at the same time that one of those exchanges were happening, the members of the School of Salamanca were laying the foundations of modern international law or formulating some of the first modern theories of price, value and money, Cervantes was writing Don Quixote, Velázquez was painting Las Meninas, or Goya was exposing both the dark and bright sides of the European Enlightenment. Actually, whenever we contemplate the galleries devoted to Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Murillo or Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid; when we visit the National Palace in Mexico City, a mission in California, a Jesuit church in Rome or the Intramuros quarter in Manila; or when we hear Spanish being spoken in a myriad of accents in the streets of San Francisco, New Orleans or Manhattan we are experiencing some of the past and present fruits of an always vibrant and still expanding cultural community. As the reader can infer by now, this book is about how Spain and the larger Hispanic world have contributed to world history and in particular to the history of civilisation, not only at the zenith of the Hispanic Monarchy but throughout a much longer span of time.