Enjoy tales from Spain while sharpening your new language skills! Practice and improve your reading skills in your new language while enjoying the support of your native tongue with Stories from Spain, Third Edition. Both insightful and practical, this book features Spanish and English stories presented in a side-by-side format that saves you the inconvenience of constantly having to look up unfamiliar words and expressions in a dictionary. Simply read as much as you can understand in your new language and refer to the facing page for help, if needed. A bilingual vocabulary list featured at the end of the book serves as a handy reference for new words. The best way to learn about a new culture is through its folktales and legends. The eighteenth fascinating stories offer valuable insights into the rich culture of Spain. And now you can hear the stories read aloud by native Spanish speakers online and via app. This new edition gives you access to a full 60 minutes of audio—twelve of the stories included in the book. Hearing the stories read aloud in their original language will help increase your comprehension and pronunciation skills even more. Stories from Spain, Third Edition brings you: • A convenient side-by-side presentation with English on one page and Spanish on the facing page • Eighteen short stories from Spain • Extensive English-Spanish and Spanish-English vocabulary lists • 60 minutes of audio recordings read by native Spanish speakers and available online or via app

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.

A fun and interesting book about Spain. It comes packed with fun and juicy trivia, fun facts and interesting stories about the great country of Spain.

This book considers the most electorally successful political party in Spain, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), which was in government for two of the three decades since it won office under Felipe González in 1982. Providing rich historical background, the book’s main focus is on the period since General Franco’s death in 1975. It charts Spain’s modernisation under the PSOE, with a particular focus on the role played by European integration in this process. Covering events including the 2011 general election, the book is one of the most up-to-date works available in English and will be of great interest to academics and undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of Spanish and European studies.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) pitted conservative forces including the army, the Church, the Falange (fascist party), landowners, and industrial capitalists against the Republic, installed in 1931 and supported by intellectuals, the petite bourgeoisie, many campesinos (farm laborers), and the urban proletariat. Provoking heated passions on both sides, the Civil War soon became an international phenomenon that inspired a number of literary works reflecting the impact of the war on foreign and national writers. While the literature of the period has been the subject of scholarship, women's literary production has not been studied as a body of work in the same way that literature by men has been, and its unique features have not been examined. Addressing this lacuna in literary studies, this volume provides fresh perspectives on well-known women writers, as well as less studied ones, whose works take the Spanish Civil War as a theme. The authors represented in this collection reflect a wide range of political positions. Writers such as Maria Zambrano, Mercè Rodoreda, and Josefina Aldecoa were clearly aligned with the Republic, whereas others, including Mercedes Salisachs and Liberata Masoliver, sympathized with the Nationalists. Most, however, are situated in a more ambiguous political space, although the ethics and character portraits that emerge in their works might suggest Republican sympathies. Taken together, the essays are an important contribution to scholarship on literature inspired by this pivotal point in Spanish history.

In 1843, an Oxford University professor reported to British academics and agriculturalists on a deposit of phosphorite he had visited in Logrosan, Extremadura, Spain. A mineral much in demand by manure manufacturers, once crushed, it was dissolved in sulphuric acid to produce superphosphate, the world's first artifical chemical manure. Once the railway between Madrid and Lisbon was constructed in the 1860s, the industry took off. Although competition from cheaper overseas phosphates caused many of the phosphate companies to go out of business in the 1890s, demand from Spanish superphosphate manufacturers ensured the industry's survival until the mid-1900s. Today, with the assistance of EU funding, a number of these mines have been developed as tourist attractions as part of Spain's geo-mining heritage. Bernard O'Connor and Leyre Solano's book investigates the origins, development and eventual decline of the Spanish phosphate industry.

A challenging re-examination of Spanish history, questioning orthodoxies about Spain's economy and society.