How did flamenco—a song and dance form associated with both a despised ethnic minority in Spain and a region frequently derided by Spaniards—become so inexorably tied to the country’s culture? Sandie Holguín focuses on the history of the form and how reactions to the performances transformed from disgust to reverance over the course of two centuries. Holguín brings forth an important interplay between regional nationalists and image makers actively involved in building a tourist industry. Soon they realized flamenco performances could be turned into a folkloric attraction that could stimulate the economy. Tourists and Spaniards alike began to cultivate flamenco as a representation of the country's national identity. This study reveals not only how Spain designed and promoted its own symbol but also how this cultural form took on a life of its own.

This study examines the discourses of nationalism as they intersected or clashed with Spanish film production from its inception to the present. While the book addresses the discourses around filmmakers such as Almodóvar and Medem, whose work has achieved international recognition, Spanish National Cinema is particularly novel in its treatment of a whole range of popular cinema rarely touched on in studies of Spanish cinema. Using accounts of films, popular film magazines and documents not readily available to an English-speaking audience, as well as case studies focusing on the key issues of each epoch, this volume illuminates the complex and changing relationship between cinema and Spanish national identity.

The history of twentieth-century Spanish nationalism is a complex one, placing a set of famously distinctive regional identities against a backdrop of religious conflict, separatist tensions, and the autocratic rule of Francisco Franco. And despite the undeniably political character of that story, cultural history can also provide essential insights into the subject. Metaphors of Spain brings together leading historians to examine Spanish nationalism through its diverse and complementary cultural artifacts, from “formal” representations such as the flag to music, bullfighting, and other more diffuse examples. Together they describe not a Spanish national “essence,” but a nationalism that is constantly evolving and accommodates multiple interpretations.

This book analyzes the promotion of subnational identities undertaken by Spanish fascism and the Franco regime between 1930 and 1975, as well as their patterns of survival, accommodation and adaptation. It examines the proactive attitudes of the various actors committed to the dictatorship – from Falangists to Francoist intellectuals to Catholic conservatives – alongside their repressive or annihilating approach to regional cultures and languages. As in most Fascist regimes between 1922 and 1945, a narrative of the ethnocultural, ethnoterritorial and historic diversity of the nation persisted, with differing degrees of intensity and different tendencies. These discourses and practices were not limited exclusively to the ideological and social sphere of anti-Francoism, and the roots of the ‘State of the Autonomous Communities’, which gave rise to the extension of political autonomy to all Spanish regions from 1978 onwards, date back to the deep structure of the dictatorship, with foundations in demands put forward by the local, provincial and regional elites within later Francoism. The volume is primarily written for scholars and students of Iberian Studies, European Modern and Contemporary History, Cultural Studies, especially those with an interest in memory studies, fascism, nationalism and regionalism, cultural resistance under dictatorship, and transitions from dictatorship to democracy.

The Routledge Handbook to Spanish Film Music provides a significant contribution to the research and history of Spanish film music, exploring the interdependence and ways in which discourses of sound and vision are constructed dialogically in Spanish cinema, with contributions from leading international researchers from Spain, the USA, the UK, France and Germany. Offering a multifocal and multidisciplinary study between related areas such as music studies, film studies and Spanish cultural studies, this book is divided into four sections, covering the early years of Spanish cinema; the 1940s and 1950s in Spanish cinema—the first decades of the Franco dictatorship; the importance of Fraga Iribarne’s slogan, “Spain is different,” to promote Spain’s new openness to the world in the 1960s and 1970s; and Spanish cinema since the arrival of democracy in 1978, including discussion of contemporary Spanish cinema. The growing interest in Spanish cinema calls for the publication of studies about the role of music in its political and socio-cultural framework. This is therefore a valuable text for music and film scholars and professionals, university undergraduates and music conservatory students.

This book will be essential for scholars and students interested in Ibero-American cultural studies, gender, religion, and totalitarian politics. --Book Jacket.

"Futurism was the state of the Fascist regime" - this is the view one encounters in most books written on Futurist art and literature. Whilst there can be no doubt about Futurist involvement with the founding of the fascist movement, little is known about the internal relationship between Futurists and Fascists in the years 1918-22, nor about the reasons for the Futurists' departure from the Fascist movement in 1920, or about Futurist opposition to (and even armed struggle against) the Fascist regime after 1924. Whilst the public documents testifying to Futurist support of Mussolini are well known, little has been written about Futurist anti-fascism camouflaged as official adherence to the regime. This study, based primarily on unknown or unpublished documents discovered in state archives and private collections, presents a new andfar more complex picture of the relationship of the two movements than has previously been shown by critics and historians.

This book provides an in-depth ethnographic investigation of the greatly underestimated and underappreciated contributions of women singers, the cantaoras, to the creation, transmission and innovation in flamenco song. Situating the study of flamenco in the context of social and political currents that have shaped twentieth-century Spain, and drawing on interviews with the cantaoras themselves, Loren Chuse shows how flamenco is a complex of cultural practices at once musical, physical, verbal and social, involving the expression and negotiation of complex multi-layered identities, including notions of Andalusian, regional, gypsy and gender identity. Chuse shows how women are engaged in the formation of flamenco today, and how they respond to the balance and tensions between tradition and innovation. In so doing, she encourages a deeper appreciation of flamenco and initiates new approaches within ethnomusicology, feminist scholarship, flamenco, gender and popular music studies.

Since the 1920s, an endless flow of studies has analyzed the political systems of fascism, theseizure of power, the nature of the regimes, the atrocities committed, and, finally, the wars waged against other countries. However, much less attention has been paid to the strategies of persuasion employed by the regimes to win over the masses for their cause. Among these, fascist propaganda has traditionally been seen as the key means of influencing public opinion. Only recently has the "fascination with Fascism" become a topic of enquiry that has also formed the guiding interest of this volume: it offers, for the first time, a comparative analysis of the forms and functions of theater in countries governed by fascist or para-fascist regimes. By examining a wide spectrum of theatrical manifestations in a number of States with a varying degree of fascistization, these studies establish some of the similarities and differences between the theatrical cultures of several cultures in the interwar period.