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In the central decades of the 19th century, Spain developed a banking system based on plurality of issuance. Various banks were authorized by the state to circulate their banknotes in their respective provinces. This process gave rise to a mosaic of issuing banks. Their existence facilitated the acceptance of banknotes, at the same time as these banks provided means of payment in the territories in which they operated. The effects were important both for the spread of the banknote and for the economy. This paper summarizes the Spanish issuing experience, which was affected by the crisis of 1866 and ended in 1874 with the issuing monopoly in the hands of the Banco de España. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eventual disconnection between voters´ preferences and specific policies is of special concern in decentralized countries, where any policy initiative might be simultaneously seen either as an erosion or a reinforcement of selfrule. The aim of this paper is to apply this framework to the harmonization of the Spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax (IGT). We econometrically contrast whether citizens´ living in Autonomous Communities (ACs) that led a tax race to the bottom regarding this tax or in those that exert a greater taste for political autonomy are more likely to oppose a more nationally uniform tax than the rest of Spaniards. Empirically, we exploit data from the 2019 wave of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Fiscal Barometer. According to our main results, citizens living in low taxation ACs and citizens living in some more pro-self-rule regions are even more likely to favor harmonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether stress, possibly aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, is a problem that affects the quality of life of the Spanish rural population. It is a subject that has been little dealt with in Spain, where there is a tendency to associate life in rural areas with peace and quiet, as opposed to presumed stressful living in urban areas. The aim is to study the situation in four rural populations of Galicia and Castilla y León, with special attention to owners and workers of livestock farms, using semi-structured interviews conducted between April and July, 2022. The results show the presence of stress among entrepreneurs and farm workers, mainly related to economic difficulties, as well as a deterioration of their relationship with workers in the service sector. This approach to rural stress concludes by identifying different forms of stress that affect the rural population and disturb the idyllic image of these territories, which has traditionally made these territories attractive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fact checking is becoming an essential journalistic task because of the proliferation of misinformative content disseminated massively through social media and other channels. Based on this observation, the fundamental objective of the research that serves as the basis for this paper was to learn about the Spanish journalists' professional routines and training in fact-checking. The authors developed a 29-item questionnaire distributed via email to journalists nationwide between May and June 2023 to collect the information. We obtained 326 responses, resulting in several findings: a) the implementation of data verification is not uniform, being more frequent in some types of media --newspapers and verification platforms-- and in large corporations; b) workload is an obstacle that prevents most journalists from devoting as much time to verification as it would require; c) some areas generate more problems when it comes to cross-checking data --such as politics and economics--; d) the preferred sources for verification are academic and official sources --governments, state security forces-; e) the digital tools that are known or used by professionals still have low penetration rates, with only some exceptions; f) although the perception of the respondents is that they are sufficiently trained for verification work, only a minority have received specific training in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the traditional interpretation that reduces Spanish-French rivalry to a succession of military confrontations that originated during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, this paper offers a more complex reading of the phenomena of emulation/competition and admiration/seduction between the two monarchies during the first phase of the Italian Wars. Thanks to a re-reading of diplomatic sources and propagandistic production, it shows to what extent the yearnings for religious reform, defence against Ottoman expansion or the recovery of the Christian East conditioned the perceptions and justifications of both powers, which needed the Apostolic See to legitimise their Mediterranean aspirations and their leadership in Christendom. However, there are differences in the means employed and in the degree of synergy with the papacy between the Valois and the last Trastamara monarchies that explain the ascendence of the latter in the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behaviours that deviate from social norms are often labeled as scandalous, especially if their protagonists are women. In the 19th century, the hegemonic social model was that of separate spheres (public/private). However, some women manifested behaviours that defied tradition. Whether in their private or domestic life, in their activity in the cultural world, at university, in the workplace, and even in politics, they caused scandal and rejection. These behaviors were sometimes condemned by public morality and even by legislative and judicial authorities. This paper analyzes --through literary, newspaper, legislative, and judicial sources-- how nineteenth-century Spanish society received these changes, whether it accepted or opposed them, and how they influenced the model of the new woman and the debate on the woman question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between Spain and Algeria from 1962 to the present day have been influenced by different factors that have led to a strange neighbourly relationship, marked by the duality between conflict and cooperation. In this paper we will try to unpack these factors and highlight their influence and possibilities for conflict and cooperation. Although some are now part of the past, many others (gas, Morocco, Western Sahara, and the European Union) remain in the past and define Spanish-Algerian bilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]