This accessible introduction to the history and civilization of Spain is an excellent vehicle for introducing intermediate or advanced students to Spanish civilization and culture. The updated edition retains the solid cultural and historical coverage from previous editions, while adding new information about modern-day political organization and culture, greater emphasis on the regional divisions of Spain, and more coverage of women in Spanish history and society.

Related publisher website provides links to Spanish-language sites relevant to each chapter.

African slavery was pervasive in Spain’s Atlantic empire yet remained in the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict. The international group of scholars brought together in this volume explain Spain’s role as a colonial pioneer in the Atlantic world and its latecomer status as a slave-trading, plantation-based empire. These contributors map the broad contours and transformations of slave-trafficking, the plantation, and antislavery in the Hispanic Atlantic while also delving into specific topics that include: the institutional and economic foundations of colonial slavery; the law and religion; the influences of the Haitian Revolution and British abolitionism; antislavery and proslavery movements in Spain; race and citizenship; and the business of the illegal slave trade.

A readable and erudite study of the cultural history of Spain and its people.

Compiled in 1582, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain is one of the two principal sources of Nahuatl song, as well as a poetical window into the mindset of the Aztec people some sixty years after the conquest of Mexico. Presented as a cancionero, or anthology, in the mode of New Spain, the ballads show a reordering—but not an abandonment—of classic Aztec values. In the careful reading of John Bierhorst, the ballads reveal in no uncertain terms the pre-conquest Aztec belief in the warrior's paradise and in the virtue of sacrifice. This volume contains an exact transcription of the thirty-six Nahuatl song texts, accompanied by authoritative English translations. Bierhorst includes all the numerals (which give interpretive clues) in the Nahuatl texts and also differentiates the text from scribal glosses. His translations are thoroughly annotated to help readers understand the imagery and allusions in the texts. The volume also includes a helpful introduction and a larger essay, "On the Translation of Aztec Poetry," that discusses many relevant historical and literary issues. In Bierhorst's expert translation and interpretation, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain emerges as a song of resistance by a conquered people and the recollection of a glorious past. Announcing a New Digital Initiative http://www.lib.utexas.edu/books/utdigital/ UT Press, in a new collaboration with the University of Texas Libraries, will publish an interactive digital adaptation of the Ballads that will expand the scholarly content beyond what is possible to publish in book form. The web site, to launch in conjunction with the book in July 2009, includes all of the printed book plus scans of the original codex, a normative transcription, and space to interact with the author and other scholars, as well as art, audio, a map, and other related material. The digital Ballads will be open access, bringing one of the university’s rare holdings to scholars around the world.

Iberian Books II & III presents an indispensable foundational listing of everything known to have been published in Spain, Portugal and the New World, or of items printed in Spanish or Portuguese elsewhere, during the first half of the seventeenth century. Drawing on library catalogues, specialist bibliographies and studies, as well as auction catalogue records, Iberian Books lists 45,000 items, and the locations of some 215,000 copies surviving in 1,800 collections worldwide. These volumes offer a powerful research tool which will appeal to researchers, librarians and to the book selling and collecting communities. They will prove invaluable to anyone with a research interest in the literature, history and culture of the Iberian Peninsula in the early modern age. This set supplements Iberian Books, which logs the Iberian print production up to 1601. Los dos volúmenes de Iberian Books II & III ofrecen un registro pionero de todos los impresos publicados en España, Portugal y el Nuevo Mundo, o en español o portugués en otros lugares, entre 1601 y 1650. A partir del trabajo realizado en bibliotecas, la revisión de bibliografías especializadas y de catálogos de casas de subastas, Iberian Books recoge 45.000 impresos conservados en 215.000 ejemplares preservados en 1.800 colecciones de todo el mundo. Estos volúmenes ofrecen una herramienta de investigación de gran utilidad para investigadores, bibliotecarios, libreros y coleccionistas. Los dos volúmenes resultarán de enorme valor a todo aquel investigador interesado en la literatura, la historia y la cultura de la Península Ibérica de la Edad Moderna.

General Francisco Franco, also called the Caudillo, was the dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. His life has been examined in many previous biographies. However, most of these have been traditional, linear biographies that focus on Franco’s military and political careers, neglecting the significance of who exactly Franco was for the millions of Spaniards over whom he ruled for almost forty years. In this new biography Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez looks at Franco from a fresh perspective, emphasizing the cultural and social over the political. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco uses previously unknown archival sources to analyse how the dictator was portrayed by the propaganda machine, how the opposition tried to undermine his prestige, and what kind of opinions, rumours and myths people formed of him, and how all these changed over time. The author argues that the collective construction of Franco’s image emerged from a context of material needs, the political traumas caused by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the complex cultural workings of a society in distress, political manipulation, and the lack of any meaningful public debate. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco is a study of Franco’s life as experienced and understood by ordinary people; by those who loved or admired him, by those who hated or disliked him, and more generally, by those who had no option but to accommodate their existence to his rule. The book has a significance that goes well beyond Spain, as Cazorla-Sanchez explores the all-too-common experience of what it is like to live under the deep shadow cast by an always officially praised, ever present, and long lasting dictator.