Portugal is an established member of the European Union, one of the founders of the euro currency and a founding member of NATO. Yet it is an inconspicuous and largely overlooked country on the continent's southwest rim. Barry Hatton shines a light on this enigmatic corner of Europe by blending historical analysis with entertaining personal anecdotes. He describes the idiosyncrasies that make the Portuguese unique and surveys the eventful path that brought them to where they are today. Portugal, which claims Europe's oldest fixed borders, measures just 561 by 218 kilometers. Within that space, however, it offers a patchwork of widely differing and beautiful landscapes. With an easygoing and seductive lifestyle expressed most fully in their love of food, the Portuguese also have an anarchical streak evident in many facets of contemporary life. A veteran journalist and commentator on Portugal, the author gives a thorough overview of his adopted country.

The miraculous story of Madrid--how a village became a great world city

For centuries Madrid was an insignificant settlement on the central Iberian plateau. Under its Muslim rulers the town was fortified and enlarged, but even after the Reconquista it remained secondary to nearby Toledo. But Madrid's fortunes dramatically shifted in the sixteenth century, becoming the centre of a vast global empire.

Luke Stegemann tells the surprising story of Madrid's flourishing, and its outsize influence across the world. From Cervantes and Quevedo to Velázquez and Goya, Spain's capital has been home to some of Europe's most influential artists and thinkers. It formed a vital link between Europe and the Americas and became a cauldron of political dissent--not least during the Spanish Civil War, when the city was on the frontline in the fight against fascism.

Stegemann places Madrid and its people in global context, showing how the city--fast overtaking Barcelona as a centre of international finance and cultural tourism--has become a melting pot at the heart of Europe and the wider Hispanic world.

A richly researched account of the clever, industrious and deeply practical men who followed in the footsteps, often literally, of Columbus, Cortés, Pizarro, Núñez de Balboa and others.--Wall Street Journal

The untold story of the engineering behind the empire, showing how imperial Spain built upon existing infrastructure and hierarchies of the Inca, Aztec, and more, to further its growth.

Sixteenth-century Spain was small, poor, disunited, and sparsely populated. Yet the Spaniards and their allies built the largest empire the world had ever seen. How did they achieve this? Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo argue that Spain's engineers were critical to this venture. The Spanish invested in infrastructure to the advantage of local power brokers, enhancing the abilities of incumbent elites to grow wealthy on trade, and widening the arc of Spanish influence. Bringing to life stories of engineers, prospectors, soldiers, and priests, the authors paint a vivid portrait of Spanish America in the age of conquest. This is a dazzling new history of the Spanish Empire, and a new understanding of empire itself, as a venture marked as much by collaboration as oppression.

Winner of the Phi Alpha Theta Best Subsequent Book Award
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

The captivating and definitive account of the Great Lisbon Earthquake--the most consequential natural disaster of modern times.

On All Saints' Day 1755, tremors from an earthquake measuring approximately 9.0 or perhaps higher on the magnitude scale swept furiously toward Lisbon, then one of the wealthiest cities in the world and the capital of a vast global empire. Within minutes, much of the city lay in ruins. A half hour later, a giant tsunami unleashed by the quake smashed into Portugal's coastline and barreled up the Tagus River, carrying countless thousands out to sea. To complete Lisbon's destruction, a hellacious firestorm then engulfed the city's shattered remains, killing thousands more and incinerating much of what the earthquake and tsunami had spared.

Drawing on a wealth of new sources, the latest scientific research, and a sophisticated grasp of European history, Mark Molesky gives us the gripping, authoritative account of the Great Lisbon Earthquake disaster and its impact on the Western world--including descriptions of the world's first international relief effort, the rise of a brutal, yet modernizing, dictatorship in Portugal, and the effect of the catastrophe on the spirit and direction of the European Enlightenment.

On April 26, 1937, in the late afternoon of a busy market day in the Basque town of Gernika in northern Spain, the German Luftwaffe began the relentless bombing and machine-gunning of buildings and villagers. Three-and-a-half hours later, the village lay in ruins, its population decimated. This act of terror and unspeakable cruelty outraged the world and one man in particular, Pablo Picasso. The renowned artist, an expatriate living in Paris, reacted immediately to the devastation in his homeland by creating the canvas that would become widely considered one of the greatest artworks of the twentieth century--Guernica. Weaving themes of conflict and redemption, of the horors of war and of the power of art to transfigure tragedy, Russell Martin follows this monumental work from its fevered creation through its
journey across decades and continents.

Absorbing . . . Picasso's War is a fetching and well-crafted account of Pablo Picasso's huge and astounding painting, Guernica.
--Los Angeles Times

Refreshingly original . . . Martin is above all a first-rate investigator [who] deftly weaves together world and art history.
--The Boston Globe

A fascinating and lively read.
--The Denver Post

An engrossing story of a landmark work of art . . . Martin is, first and foremost, a consummate storyteller.
--Kirkus Reviews

A new history of the Portugal's Carnation Revolution on its fiftieth anniversary

25 April 1974, Lisbon. Over the course of a single day, Europe's oldest fascist regime falls. On its 50th anniversary, this is the story of the revolution that changed Portugal forever.

'The Carnation Revolution reads like a political thriller.' The Times

On the night of 24 April 1974, at five minutes to eleven, a Lisbon radio station broadcasts Portugal's Eurovision entry. By 6.20 p.m. the next day, Europe's oldest fascist regime has fallen. Hardly a shot has been fired. As citizens pour into the streets, they offer carnations to the revolutionary soldiers. For the first time in forty-eight years, Portugal is free.

The Carnation Revolution winds through the streets of Lisbon as the revolution unfolds, revealing the myriad acts of ordinary and extraordinary resistance that made 25 April possible. It's the story of daring escapes from five-storey prisons, soldiers disobeying their officers' orders and simple acts of courage by thousands of citizens. It's the story of how a group of young captains felled a globe-spanning empire.

***

'I feel like I've been waiting three decades for precisely this book.' Lara Pawson, author of This Is the Place to Be

'A brilliantly detailed and evocative account of a revolution unlike any other.' Helder Macedo, Emeritus Professor of Portuguese, King's College London

'A gripping account of an episode in European history that should be better known.' Catherine Fletcher, author of The Beauty and the Terror

'A thrilling and inspiring page-turner.' Richard Zimler, author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

A deeply researched, pathbreaking collection of original and newly translated essays on slavery in Spain, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.

This groundbreaking volume addresses the enslavement and experiences of Black Africans in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean, particularly La Española (or Hispaniola) and Puerto Rico, two of the earliest colonies. Spanning nearly four hundred years and rooted in extensive archival research, Transatlantic Bondage sheds light on a number of relatively underexamined topics in these locales, including the development and application of slavery laws, disobedience and its consequences, migration, gender, family, lifestyle, and community building among the free Black population and white allies. In bringing together new and recent work by leading scholars, including two essays translated into English here for the first time, the book is also a call for further study of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean and its impact on the region.

The Pyrenees Mountains of Spain are a locus unique, characterized by a rugged landscape, extremes in climate, and isolated villages. A stronghold of independence, the area has long sheltered a rich tapestry of folk customs and magical belief, and served as a refuge for heretical sects of the Middle Ages. It was here, in 1424, that the first secular laws against witchcraft were passed. It was also the birthplace of the unique figure of the bruxa or Primordial Witch, a supernatural figure which could communicate with spirits, cast spells, control weather, and serve as the Devil's consort.

Drawing upon Inquisition records, as well as local history, folklore, and magical practices, the Land of the Goat explores the nature of the Pyrenean witch and the evolution of its character and craft over time. Its subjects include the Spirit-Double, veneficium (the use of poisons), and the witches' nocturnal flight to the phantasmagoric Lande de Boc or 'Land of the Goat'. Also examined is the animistic substrate of ancient goddesses and spirits of the nocturnal realm, such as the Basque Mari who, like Diana, was associated with the sky-roving Night Host. The unique forms of the Pyrenean Devil, pre-dating the Christian Satan, are also investigated; chief among these was Akerbeltz, the Black He-Goat, closely associated with Pyrenean shepherds and bearing the powers of death and fertility.

The Land of the Goat documents not only the history of the Pyrenean witch, but also its status as liminal to humanity, and as a perennial emanation of the land itself. Held in balance to folk custom, popular magic, and the twin adversaries of Christianity and Rationalism, the legacy of the bruxa has endured in many aspects of local folklore.

--Three Hands Press Publisher

Reprint Edition of the 1938 Edition. Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the Republican army. Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little commercial success, it gained more attention in the 1950s following the success of Orwell's better-known works Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, Orwell recounts Catalonia's revolutionary fervor during his training in Barcelona, his boredom on the front lines in Aragon, his involvement in the May Days conflict back in Barcelona on leave, his getting shot in the throat back on the front lines, and his escape to France after the Republican Army was declared an illegal organization.

The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

Amid the many catastrophes of the twentieth century, the Spanish Civil War continues to exert a particular fascination among history buffs and the lay-reader alike. This Very Short Introduction integrates the political, social and cultural history of the Spanish Civil War. It sets out the domestic and international context of the war for a general readership. In addition to tracing the course of war, the book locates the war's origins in the cumulative social and cultural anxieties provoked by a process of rapid, uneven and accelerating modernism taking place all over Europe. This shared context is key to the continued sense of the war's importance. The book also examines the myriad of political polemics to which the war has given rise, as well as all of the latest historical debates. It assesses the impact of the war on Spain's transition to democracy and on the country's contemporary political culture.

About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 was no run-of-the-mill misfortune-it was a watershed moment that shook the pillars of an inveterate social order and sent reverberations throughout the Western world. Earth, water, wind, and fire all conspired to produce a hellish catastrophe that lasted for a full five days and left Lisbon thoroughly annihilated. Nicholas Shrady's unique account of this first modern disaster and its aftereffects successfully articulates the outcome of the earthquake-the eighteenth-century equivalent of a mass media frenzy giving rise to a host of other fascinating developments, such as disaster preparedness, landmark social reform, urban planning, and the birth of seismology.

This concise, illustrated history of Portugal offers an introduction to the people and culture of the country, its empire, and its search for economic modernisation, political stability and international partnership. It remains the standard single-volume work on Portugal, studying the effects of the vast wealth mined from Portuguese Brazil, the growth of the wine trade, and the evolution of international ties. The Portuguese Revolution of 1820 to 1851 created a liberal monarchy, but in 1910 the king was overthrown and, by 1926, had been replaced by a dictatorship. In 1975, Portugal withdrew from its African colonies and looked north to become a democratic member of the European Community in 1986. This third edition brings the story up to date, with a new afterword to reflect recent changes in Portugal, Europe, and the wider world.

First published in 1886, this classic work offers a sweeping, scholarly tale of the Moors in Spain, blending splendor and tragedy into a wonderfully readable narrative that endures through time.

We hear of how the Moors arrived and conquered the Iberian peninsula, remaining for some 800 years. Tariq ibn-Ziyad, arriving in 711 AD, began an upheaval never before seen in the European continent. The Moorish brought industriousness and commerce, a sophisticated code of laws, beautiful architecture, and outstanding scholarly achievements in astronomy and mathematics - together, these would forever shape the culture of Spain and Portugal.

To this day, the Moorish culture is readily evident in Spain. Lane-Poole charts the various turning points in Moorish rule; their lengthy stay in Europe was punctuated with battles. In the later Middle Ages, the ascendant forces of Christendom would prove increasingly powerful - the fall of Grenada in 1492 marked the effective end of their presence. However, their many mosques and beautiful constructions such as the Palace of Alhambra are extant testimony to the Moor's splendor.

Stanley Lane-Poole was a historian and archaeologist who worked in partnership with the British Museum for eighteen years. Specializing in Middle Eastern and North African culture and architecture, it was through years of painstaking study and compilation of existing documents that the author was able to compose this, and other histories.

The first book-length study to address the impact of the legacies of slavery on Spanish cultural representations and institutions.

This groundbreaking volume explores how culture produced in Spain, from the nineteenth century to the present, both reflects and shapes ways of understanding the history and heritage of a nation sustained by colonialism and slavery. Akiko Tsuchiya and Aurélie Vialette bring together an outstanding group of scholars, artists, cultural producers, and activists in a range of fields-from history to literary studies, anthropology to journalism, and flamenco to film. Drawing on interdisciplinary and comparative methodologies, contributors address the legacies of slavery in the archive; in cultural memory sites; and in literature, music, and visual arts. How, they ask, do different cultural forms and institutions represent and reckon with this past and push for justice in the face of persistent racial discrimination? In its focus on collective memory and the cultural afterlives of slavery and antislavery, Cultural Legacies of Slavery in Modern Spain will appeal not only to Iberian and Latin American specialists but also readers across Afro-Hispanic, postcolonial, transatlantic, and critical race studies.

Emilio Silva Barrera, a prominent Spanish journalist, recounts his tireless search for, and discovery of, the body of his grandfather, a civilian who was murdered by fascist gunmen in the first months of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and left in a roadside ditch. Due to the pervasive fear that permeated daily life in that country, many thousands of victims of politically-motivated crimes were never discovered, no questions were asked, no justice served. Thanks to Silva's determination to right the wrongs of Spain's totalitarian past, the silence imposed by repression is being broken.

Silva's determination to help families of disappeared relatives led him to create the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. This group is dedicated to the discovery, exhumation, identification and return of the remains of victims of political violence during and after the Spanish Civil War to their families for proper burial.

Anyone who has ever felt powerless in the face of a seemingly impossible hurdle and asked, But what can one person do? should read this book.

The story of an uncovered voyage as colorful and momentous as any on record for the Age of Discovery--and of the Black mariner whose stunning accomplishment has been until now lost to history

It began with a secret mission, no expenses spared. Spain, plotting to break Portugal's monopoly trade with the fabled Orient, set sail from a hidden Mexican port to cross the Pacific--and then, critically, to attempt the never-before-accomplished return, the vuelta. Four ships set out from Navidad, each one carrying a dream team of navigators. The smallest ship, guided by seaman Lope Martín, a mulatto who had risen through the ranks to become one of the most qualified pilots of the era, soon pulled far ahead and became mysteriously lost from the fleet. It was the beginning of a voyage of epic scope, featuring mutiny, murderous encounters with Pacific islanders, astonishing physical hardships--and at last a triumphant return to the New World. But the pilot of the fleet's flagship, the Augustine friar mariner Andrés de Urdaneta, later caught up with Martín to achieve the vuelta as well. It was he who now basked in glory, while Lope Martín was secretly sentenced to be hanged by the Spanish crown as repayment for his services. Acclaimed historian Andrés Reséndez, through brilliant scholarship and riveting storytelling--including an astonishing outcome for the resilient Lope Martín--sets the record straight.

The Spanish Civil War was one of the most passionate idealogical conflicts of modern times. It was the greatest and last struggle between traditional Catholicism and liberal secularism. To many, religion became the most divisive issue of the war, the single problem that distinguished one fraction from another.
The Spanish Civil War as a Religious Tragedy is the first full-length comprehensive study of the religious dimension of the Spanish conflict. Drawing on memoirs, eye-witness accounts, the religious press of the period, and a thorough reading of secondary literature, José M. Sánchez objectively examines the events, issues, attitudes, and effects of the war and corrects the mythology that has grown up around the topic.
Especially vivid is Sánchez's account of the anticlerical fury in which nearly 7,000 clerics were killed, thousands of churches burned and destroyed, countless lay-persons assassinated, and the entire cultural ethic of Spanish Catholicism set upon an iconoclastic bloodletting worse than any other in the history of Christianity. The clergy's offering of pastoral and idealogical support to Franco's Nationalists as a response to the fury is also examined. Sánchez then focuses on the complexities of the Basques - an intensely Catholic people who made common cause with the anticlerical Republicans. He explores the Vatican's policy toward both sides, and analyzes the theological and moral controversy over the justice of the war as fought in the journals and the press, both in Spain and abroad. Finally, he investigates the controversies as they affected Catholics in France, England, and the United States, and concludes with an evaluation of the war's impact upon the religious consciousness of Spain, the Church, and the western world.

A book of rich detail.--The Wall Street Journal

Bestselling author of Ghosts of Spain Giles Tremlett traverses the rich and varied history of Spain, from prehistoric times to today, in a brief, accessible primer with color illustrations throughout.

Spain's position on Europe's southwestern corner has exposed the country to cultural, political, and literal winds blowing from all quadrants throughout the country's ancient history. Africa lies a mere nine miles to the south, separated by the Strait of Gibraltar-a mountain range struck, Spaniards believe, by Hercules, in an immaculate and divine display of strength. The Mediterranean connects Spain to the civilizational currents of Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, and Byzantines as well as the Arabic lands of the near east. Hordes from the Russian steppes were amongst the first to arrive. They would be followed by Visigoths, Arabs, and Napoleonic armies and many more invaders and immigrants. Circular winds and currents extended its borders to the American continent, allowing it to conquer and colonize much of the New World as the first ever global empire. Spain, as we know it today, was made by generations-worth of changing peoples, worshipping Christian, Jewish, and Muslim gods over time. The foundation of its story has been drawn and debated, celebrated and reproached. Whenever it has tried to deny its heterogeneity and create a pure national identity, the narrative has proved impossible to maintain.

In España, Giles Tremlett, who has lived in and written about Spain for over thirty years, swiftly traces every stretch of Spain's history to argue that a lack of a homogenous identity is Spain's defining trait. With gorgeous color images, España is perfect for lovers of Spain and fans of international history.

This is a comprehensive history of Portugal that covers the whole span, from the Stone Age to today. An introduction provides an understanding of geographical and climatic issues, before an examination of Portugal's prehistory and classical Portugal, from the Stone Age to the end of the the Roman era.

Portugal's history from ad420 to the thirteenth century takes in the Suevi, Visigoths and Moors. Then, a look at medieval Portugal, covers the development of Christian Portugal culminating with the expulsion of the Moors, with a focus on key sites.

A subsequent section on Spanish rule, between 1580 and 1640, explains why Spain took over and why Spanish rule collapsed.

There is a significant focus on Portugal's global role, particularly during the age of exploration, or expansion, in the fifteenth century to 1580: Manueline Portugal, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama and Bel m. Portugal was the first of the Atlantic empires, with territory in the Azores, Madeira, West Africa and Brazil, and it remained a major empire until the 1820s, retaining an African empire until the 1970s. It's empire in Asia - in Malacca, Macao, Goa and Timor - continued even longer, until the 1990s. Black shows how Portugal had a global impact, but the world, too, had an impact on Portugal.

Baroque Portugal, between 1640 and 1800, is explored through palaces in Mafra, Pombal and elsewhere and the wealth of Brazil.

The nineteenth century brought turmoil in the form of a French invasion, the Peninsular War, Brazilian independence, successive revolutions, economic issues and the end of the monarchy.

Republican Portugal brought further chaos in the early years of the twentieth century, then the dictatorship of Salazar and its end in the Carnation Revolution of 1974. Portugal's role in both world wars is examined, also its wars in Africa.

From the overthrow of autocracy to a new constitution and the leadership of Soares, contemporary, democratic Portugal is explored, including the fiscal crisis of recent years.

Throughout Black introduces the history and character of the country's principal regions, including the Azores, Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands. He looks at key national sites, at Portuguese food and wine and the arts, with special sections devoted to port, Portugal's famous tiles and the university established at Coimbra in 1290.