La Historia Social de las Instituciones Punitivas está necesitada en España de encuentro y debate, de confrontación y colaboración entre investigadores e investigadoras. Solo así logrará hacerse visible e inteligible como tendencia historiográfica y sobre todo como apuesta teórico-metodológica, porque de hecho ya es más que creíble como práctica historiográfica. Aquí, en este libro, junto a los logros también se perfilan las carencias y los retos más acuciantes. Lejos de buscar una autonomía extemporánea, la Historia Social de las Instituciones Punitivas quiere buscar su propia viabilidad a base de intersecciones y buenas mezclas. Esos objetivos se planteaba el Grupo de Estudio sobre la Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas (GEHPIP) ―un equipo interuniversitario y con sede en la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM)― al organizar lo que de forma homónima decidió titular I Congreso Internacional sobre Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas, celebrado en Ciudad Real entre el 10 y el 12 de abril de 2013. El libro electrónico que aquí se presenta es una buena muestra de lo que allí se comunicó y discutió. Social History of Punitive Institutions in Spain needs meetings and discussions, comparison and collaboration between researchers. Only then it will become visible and intelligible as a historiographical trend and, above all, as a theoretical-methodological hope, because in fact, now it is more than conceivable as a historiographical practice. Here in this book are outlined, along with the achievements, the shortcomings and the most pressing challenges. Far from seeking an extemporaneous autonomy, Social History of Punitive Institutions wants to try to find its own feasibility based on intersections and good mixings. Those objectives were considered by the Study Group about History of Prison and Punitive Institutions (Grupo de Estudio sobre la Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas, GEHPIP) –an interuniversity team and with central office at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM)– when organising what it decided to name in an homonymous way 1st International Congress on History of Prison and Punitive Institutions (I Congreso Internacional sobre Historia de la Prisión y las Instituciones Punitivas), held in Ciudad Real (Spain) from 10 to 12 April 2013. The electronic book here presented is a good example of what it was told and discussed there.

This book focuses on an important but neglected aspect of the Spanish Civil War, the evolution of medical and surgical care of the wounded during the conflict. Importantly, the focus is from a mainly Spanish perspective – as the Spanish are given a voice in their own story, which has not always been the case. Central to the book is General Franco’s treatment of Muslim combatants, the anarchist contribution to health, and the medicalisation of propaganda – themes that come together in a medico-cultural study of the Spanish Civil War. Suffusing the narrative and the analysis is the traumatic legacy of conflict, an untreated wound that a new generation of Spaniards are struggling to heal.

Recognizing the variety of health experiences across geographical borders, Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World interrogates the concepts of "health" and "healing" between 1500 and 1800. Through an interdisciplinary approach to medical history, gender history, and the literature and culture of the early modern Atlantic World, this collection of essays points to the ways in which the practice of medicine, the delivery of healthcare, and the experiences of disease and health are gendered. The contributors explore how the medical profession sought to exert its power over patients, determining standards that impacted conceptions of self and body, and at the same time, how this influence was mediated. Using a range of sources, the essays reveal the multiple and sometimes contradictory ways that early modern health discourse intersected with gender and sexuality, as well as its ties to interconnected ethical, racial, and class-driven concerns. Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World breaks new ground through its systematic focus on gender and sexuality as they relate to the delivery of healthcare, the practice of medicine, and the experiences of health and healing across early modern Spain and colonial Latin America.

In recent years, the historiography of nineteenth-century Spain and Latin America has been invigorated by interdisciplinary engagement with scholars working on topics such as empire, slavery, abolition, race, identity, and captivity. No scholar better exemplified these developments than Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, a specialist on Spain and its Caribbean colonies in Cuba and Puerto Rico. A brilliant career was cut short in 2015 when he died at the age of 48. Rethinking Atlantic Empire takes Schmidt-Nowara’s work as a point of departure, charting scholarly paths that move past reductive national narratives and embrace transnational approaches to the entangled empires of the Atlantic world.

The book explores novels, essays and poetry published by Spanish writers in response to the global economic crisis that began in 2008. Spain has been experiencing the crisis in a particularly painful way, and the artistic response to these traumatic events has been powerful and abundant. The literature of the crisis is pointing to the probability that the crisis is not a temporary problem that will be resolved once and for all if correct economic measures are taken. To the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the losses in long-term employment, the growing precariousness of work, the increased economic insecurity, the citizens' disillusionment with the capacity of democratic governments to withstand the pressures of global capital, the erosion of the welfare state, and the explosive growth in inequality that we associate with the crisis are not likely to be reversed. Spanish artists are exploring the reasons behind Spain's particularly painful experience of the crisis and, at the same time, are placing the suffering that the crisis is causing in Spain within the context of global developments that are ensuring its durability. Essays by Antonio Muñoz Molina and Lucía Etxebarria, novels by Rafael Chirbes, Luis García Montero, Benjamín Prado, and Belén Gopegui, and poetry by the artists who contributed to the collections titled En legítima defensa. Poetas en tiempos de crisis and Marca(da) España. Retrato poético de una sociedad en crisis point to the necessity of expanding our vision of the crisis from the purely financial to a broader definition that will include the changes the crisis augurs for the areas of human existence that lie outside the strictly economic realm.

This book explores the activities of early modern Irish migrants in Spain, particularly their rather surprising association with the Spanish Inquisition. Pushed from home by political, economic and religious instability, and attracted to Spain by the wealth and opportunities of its burgeoning economy and empire, the incoming Irish fell prey to the Spanish Inquisition. For the inquisitors, the Irish, as vassals of Elizabeth I, were initially viewed as a heretical threat and suffered prosecution for Protestant heresy. However, for most Irish migrants, their dual status as English vassals and loyal Catholics permitted them to adapt quickly to provide brokerage and intermediary services to the Spanish state, mediating informally between it and Protestant jurisdictions, especially England. The Irish were particularly successful in forging an association with the Inquisition to convert incoming Protestant soldiers, merchants and operatives for useful service in Catholic Spain. As both victims and agents of the Inquisition, the Irish emerge as a versatile and complex migrant group. Their activities complicate our view of early modern migration and raise questions about the role of migrant groups and their foreign networks in the core historical narratives of Ireland, Spain and England, and in the history of their connections. Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition throws new light on how the Inquisition worked, not only as an organ of doctrinal police, but also in its unexpected role as a cross-creedal instrument of conversion and assimilation.

Although the radical populist movement that arose in Russia during the reign of Tsar Alexander II has been well documented, this important study opens with questions that haven't yet been addressed: How did Russian radical populists manage to carry out a three-year campaign of revolutionary violence, killing or wounding scores of people, including top government officials, and eventually taking the life of the tsar himself? And how did this all occur under the noses of the tsar's political police, who deployed vast resources and huge numbers of officials in an exhaustive effort to stop the killing? In Underground Petersburg, Christopher Ely argues that the most powerful weapon of populist terrorism was the revolutionary underground it created. Attempts to convey populist ideals in the public sphere met with resistance at every turn. When methods such as propaganda campaigns and street demonstrations failed, populists created a sophisticated urban underground. Linked to the newly discovered weapon of terrorist violence, this base of operations allowed them to live undetected in the midst of the city, produce their own weaponry, and attempt to ignite an insurrection through violent attacks—putting terrorism on the map as a technique of political rebellion. Accessible to non-specialists, this insightful study reinterprets radical populism, clarifying its crucial place in Russian history and elucidating its contribution to the history of terrorism. Underground Petersburg will appeal to scholars and students of Russia, as well as those interested in terrorism and insurrectionary movements, urban studies, and the sociology of subcultures.