In Refiguring Spain, Marsha Kinder has gathered a collection of new essays that explore the central role played by film, television, newspapers, and art museums in redefining Spain's national/cultural identity and its position in the world economy during the post-Franco era. By emphasizing issues of historical recuperation, gender and sexuality, and the marketing of Spain's peaceful political transformation, the contributors demonstrate that Spanish cinema and other forms of Spanish media culture created new national stereotypes and strengthened the nation's place in the global market and on the global stage. These essays consider a diverse array of texts, ranging from recent films by Almodóvar, Saura, Erice, Miró, Bigas Luna, Gutiérrez Aragón, and Eloy de la Iglesia to media coverage of the 1993 elections. Francoist cinema and other popular media are examined in light of strategies used to redefine Spain's cultural identity. The importance of the documentary, the appropriation of Hollywood film, and the significance of gender and sexuality in Spanish cinema are also discussed, as is the discourse of the Spanish media star--whether involving film celebrities like Rita Hayworth and Antonio Banderas or historical figures such as Cervantes. The volume concludes with an investigation of larger issues of government policy in relation to film and media, including a discussion of the financing of Spanish cinema and an exploration of the political dynamics of regional television and art museums. Drawing on a wide range of critical discourses, including feminist, postcolonial, and queer theory, political economy, cultural history, and museum studies, Refiguring Spain is the first comprehensive anthology on Spanish cinema in the English language. Contributors. Peter Besas, Marvin D'Lugo, Selma Reuben Holo, Dona M. Kercher, Marsha Kinder, Jaume Martí-Olivella, Richard Maxwell, Hilary L. Neroni, Paul Julian Smith, Roland B. Tolentino, Stephen Tropiano, Kathleen M. Vernon, Iñaki Zabaleta

Spain has become a remarkable democratic laboratory in which millions of citizens are experimenting with new forms of political expression. This book examines the dynamics of this political laboratory, showing that the upheavals it is experiencing are likely in the near future to affect democracies elsewhere in the world. Examining the new means of participation that were established in fields where digital communication tools enabled the launch of novel dynamics of political action, the reader will gain access to a comprehensive analysis of the reshaping and mutation process that has affected fields such as activism, political parties and political participation. Using a case study of the Spain between 2011 and 2015, the book focuses on the changes that have taken place in politics and communication in Spain, paying particular attention to the 15M movement and its disruptive, innovative strength in all matters related to politics and communication. The chapters cover political repertoires and the hybridization of horizontal and vertical political logics; the appearance of new political parties; the establishment of monitoring mechanisms as an essential means of political expression and participation; and the subversion of rationality across media as a product of the communication strategies implemented by online political activism. Showing that Spain is not just at the forefront of democratic innovation, but that it is a political laboratory in which trials are taking place that tell us much about the future of democracy everywhere, this book will be of great use to scholars of political theory, democracy and philosophy.

Does fiction do more than just represent space? Can our experiences with fictional storytelling be in themselves spatial? In Constructing Spain: The Re-imagination of Space and Place in Fiction and Film, Nathan Richardson explores relations between cultural representation and spatial transformation across fifty years of Spanish culture. Beginning in 1953, the year Spanish space was officially reopened to Western thought and capital, and culminating in 2003, the year of Aznar's unpopular involvement of his country in the second Iraq War, Richardson traces in popular and critically acclaimed fiction and film an evolution in Spanish storytelling that, while initially representative in nature, increasingly engages its audience in spatial practices that go beyond mere perception or conception of local material geographies. In original readings of films by Luis Berlanga, Luis Bu uel, Alex de la Iglesia, Alejandro Amen bar, and Julio Medem, and novels by Juan Goytisolo, Antonio Mu oz Molina, and Javier Mar as, Richardson shows this formal evolution as a necessary response to developments, restorations, and transformations of local landscapes that resulted during these years from various human migrations, tourist-invasions, urban development plans, resurgent nationalisms, and finally globalization. As these changes occur, Richardson traces a shift in the works studied from mere representation of spatial change toward actual engagement with shifting physical and social geographies, as they inch ever closer toward the production of an actual spatial experience for their audiences. In the final chapters of this book, Richardson offers in-depth and highly original readings of the storytelling projects of Medem and Mar as in particular, showing how these two artists invite readers to not only reconceive hegemonic notions of space and place, but to practice alternative notions of being-in-place. In these final readings, Constructing Spain, points to the newest developments in contemporary Spanish narrative and film, a rise of new grammars of creation to challenge the ongoing capital-driven creative destruction of globalized Spanish geography.

The first comprehensive scholarly study of Spanish erotic cinema, from the 1920s until the present dayThis book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives in the crusade films of the 1940s, the commodification of bodies in the late Franco period, and the so-called destape (literally aundressing) period that followed the abolition of censorship during the democratic transition.Reclaiming the importance of Spanish erotic cinema as a genre in itself, a range of international scholars demonstrate how the explicit depiction of sex can be a useful tool to illuminate current and historic social issues including ageism, colonialism, domestic violence, immigration, nationalisms, or women and LGBT rights. Covering a wide range of cinematic genres, including comedy, horror and melodrama, this book provides an innovative and provocative overview of Spanish cinema history and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.ContributorsBrad Epps, Cambridge UniversitySally Faulkner, University of ExeterSantiago Fouz-HernA!ndez, Durham UniversityAntonio LA!zaro-Reboll, University of KentAnnabel MartA-n, Dartmouth CollegeAlejandro Melero Salvador, Universidad Carlos III in MadridJorge PA(c)rez, University of Texas, AustinCarolina Sanabria, University of Costa Rica Rob Stone, University of BirminghamTom Whittaker, University of LiverpoolEva Woods PeirA Vassar CollegeSarah Wright, Royal Holloway, University of LondonBarbara Zecchi, University of Massachusetts Amherst

A collection of original essays from leading scholars in the field exploring the contemporary debates, concerns and controversies ongoing in Spanish film industry, culture and scholarship. The essays reveal the far-reaching shifts that have occurred in the Spanish film scene, making essential reading for all interested in European cinema.

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.

The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Spain is an unrivalled reference guide to Spanish history and politics from the Middle Ages to the present. With its chronology, introductory essay, and over seven hundred dictionary entries on major Spanish organizations, including political parties, trade unions, and state bodies; the various regions and languages which comprise Spain, including Catalonia and the Basque Country; and major figures in Spanish culture and the arts, the Historical Dictionary of Spain allows readers to easily follow the major changes Spain has undergone.