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This paper examines young children’s concepts of nature, paying attention to the role played by types of daily experiences with nature on 832 children’s constructions of the natural world. We observed the roles of three types of experiences, as determined by the children’s place of residence (urban, rural mountain range, and rural agricultural) in Spain. Participants wrote what they thought about when hearing the word ‘nature’. Content analysis revealed a conceptual structure formed with four underlying and interconnected themes: (1) natural and non-natural elements, (2) the human–nature relationship, (3) emotional experience of nature, and (4) actions in natural settings. The type of daily experiences with nature (i.e. urban, rural mountain range, and rural agricultural) accounted for variability in children’s concept of nature. These results reinforce the importance of considering the role played by personal and situational characteristics in shaping children’s constructions of the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Academia has come to realize that integrating water management and land resources can deliver a significant contribution to achieving sustainable outcomes. However, its implementation in daily practice is lagging behind. In order to address this knowledge–practice gap, this paper suggests the integration of land and water resources management can be improved through the incorporation of specific criteria in the territorial plans and river basin management plans. The proposed criteria were used to develop a methodology to assess the level of integration between water resources and land uses in current planning practice. The case of Andalusia in Spain provided the empirical focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most innovative reading practices currently rely on the paradigm of dialogic reading. Book clubs, literary gatherings and study circles are emerging in different social spaces to promote reading and literary discussion amongst adults, and libraries, bookshops, cultural centres, etc. are increasingly developing strategies in this direction. Despite the vast development of reading clubs throughout Spain, empirical research on this phenomenon is still at the embryonic stage. This paper queries the ability of this practice to encourage the pleasure of reading, as well as civic and literary education. The results, obtained from an ethnographic study of nine book club meetings and six key informant interviews, show that the discussions contribute to: (1) developing a taste for reading, literature and reading habits; (2) fostering debate about values and learning about personal experiences related to the stories covered in the various readings; and (3) learning academic skills that go beyond the scope of an informal literary analysis. The main conclusion of our study is that book club meetings generate a very favourable context for literary analysis, as they foster reading innovation and the cultivation of literature, as well as promoting values education and adult learning from a dialogic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses project splitting in environmental impact assessment (EIA), investigating the current state of knowledge through literature, legislation, case-law and practice, discussing problems and providing solutions. The focus is on Spain, but many of the conclusions are applicable worldwide. Project splitting is a much more common practice than generally accepted. The main efforts have been focused on preventing salami-slicing as a mechanism to avoid the EIA, but it is a much more complex problem, with different ways of splitting and reasons for doing so. Measures to avoid this practice should include strengthening the strategic environmental assessment, a greater involvement of the approval authority, specific prohibitions in regulations, using case-by-case examinations instead of thresholds, compulsory scoping and avoid the exclusion of project parts during the EIA. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present study used relational and predictive approaches to build on past literature examining humanlike animal attributes. From the relational approach, it examined how five humanlike attributes ascribed to animals (Attributes Questionnaire) relate to one another and to attitudes toward 21 uses of animals (Attitudes Toward the Use of Animals Scale). From the predictive approach, it examined the predictive power of human affection toward animals and human perception of animal minds for granting animals moral consideration; additionally, it analyzed the predictive power of humanlike animal attributes for willingness to become an ethical vegetarian or ethical vegan. These analyses focused specifically on gender differences. The author used SPSS and SmartPLS 3.0, a Partial Least Square tool, for statistical analyses. Results from 481 Spanish university students responding to online and pencil-and-paper questionnaires revealed overall moderate correlations between different humanlike attributes and low correlations between those attributes and animal uses. Affection toward animals and perception of animal minds were good predictors for moral consideration of animals, especially when all four attributes were aggregated in the model (R2= 0.47;Q2= 0.32). Humanlike animal attributes directly affected students’ intentions to become vegetarian and vegan but the explanatory power was weak in both cases (R2< 0.19;Q2< 0.15). The study also revealed significant gender differences. Among women, humanlike animal attributes were more closely interrelated, better correlated with a greater number of animal uses, and stronger drivers of the moral status of animals. However, data showed no significant gender differences for path strength of humanlike animal attributes on the willingness to become vegetarian or vegan. In sum, perceiving humanlike attributes in animals has ethical consequences, but its influence on the adoption of pro-animal attitudes and behavior are still unclear. More research is needed to explore and explain causal relationships between the aforementioned variables and to uncover how gender differences may affect them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the representation of food in Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón’s film Half of Heaven (Spain, 1986) and Silvio Caiozzi’s The Moon in the Mirror (Chile, 1990) as it depicts the political transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain and Chile. While the Spanish transition was initiated with Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, and the Chilean transition with Augusto Pinochet supposedly stepping down in 1989, in both cases the dictatorial power structures ensured that such a shift in political ideology did not come into effect overnight. As a result, well after Franco’s death and Pinochet’s defeat, the regimes’ institutions remained in place. With this political context in mind, food features prominently as a metaphorical representation of the complex power struggles and political shifts that were occurring in these two countries at this time. In this way, the relationship of food—presented as either good or bad, edible or contaminated—is conflated with character development in such a way that it establishes a new set of semantic networks among characters that illuminates sociocultural dynamics and political debates in transitional Spain and Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The significant increase in youth unemployment in different parts of Europe caused by the economic crisis has led to the European Council Recommendation on Establishing a Youth Guarantee (2013). This Guarantee addresses the so-called ‘NEET’ (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) younger than 25 years of age and stipulates that employment, education or training shall be provided within a period of 4 months. As the initiative is relatively recent, in-depth analyses of its contents and implantation in the Member States are still missing. This paper analyses the European Recommendation and its implementation in Spain, evaluating its potential to improve the situation of the young people and society as a whole and its risks in provoking undesired side-effects. Our results question if the whole target group will be reached and highlight the measures’ low potential to promote a real and durable change. Increasing precariousness and insecurity and the tendency to only redistribute existing labour make it conceivable that the Guarantee may contribute to converting precariousness into a new labour paradigm for the whole population. The insufficient and retroactive funding of the Youth Guarantee can provoke negative side-effects for other social policies and the country's development. We conclude with several recommendations on how to improve the Youth Guarantee and its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a practice of historical reflection grounded in the city of Granada’s aesthetic and architectural heritage. From the publication of Washington Irving’sTales of Alhambra, in 1823, up through today, Granada has been a highly celebrated destination for travelers and tourists, drawn by the sublimity of its romantic oriental splendor. Yet, although the city is well known for the Orientalist fantasy it puts on display for touristic consumption, here I consider a form of reflection that cannot be encompassed within the protocols of discourse and experience mobilized by the tourist industry, and that indeed, may challenge those protocols and the assumptions about history and geography they entail. Specifically, drawing on the work of the late-nineteenth-century Spanish writer, Angel Ganivet, I trace a tradition of reflection that engages the city’s unique sensory and architectural configuration as the basis from which to reassess Spain’s relation to both Islam and Europe. I conclude with some general observations on the way the sensory and material infrastructure of Moorish Spain mediates and conditions the possibilities of finding a place for Islam in the country today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Satisfaction is an excellent predictor of tourist behavior, often used in marketing and destination management. This paper analyzes the extent to which tourist satisfaction influences tourism expenditure at the destination using a gamma regression model, based on the information obtained from 2967 surveys conducted in 14 emerging urban cultural destinations in Andalusia, Spain. The results obtained show that there is indeed a correlation between tourist satisfaction and tourism expenditure at the destination, and guide the implementation of specific policies by stakeholders in these destinations, in order to increase the economic impact generated by this activity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nationalism and its counterpart, modernism, are projects that involve the attempt to homogenize and incorporate the masses through the creation of a majority identity that usually leads to the classification of certain deviant groups as ‘others’. In Spain, civic and ethnic nationalisms driven by the state have historically drawn on cultural and biological notions of ethnicity and race to construct a representation of the Maragatos as ‘cursed peoples’, while at the same time homogenizing and incorporating them into the nation in practice. By tracing a genealogy of the origins and evolution of the representations of Maragato otherness created during the Enlightenment era, the Franco dictatorship and the current super-modern period, this paper argues that representations of otherness significantly influence current research agendas and understandings of identity well beyond the disappearance of the actual subjects described as others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we analyse the successes and failures of contractual public-private partnerships (PPPs) for delivering and operating transport infrastructure in Spain from the award of the first toll highway concession programme to the present. To that end, we show the risk allocation principles used in Spain and explore the evolution of the contracting approaches over the years. We found that the performance was reasonably good until the arrival of the economic crisis in 2008. Taking advantage of that, we make a review of contractual PPPs for different transport modes and assess the impact that the economic crisis has had on their business performance and the capacity of the central and regional governments to fulfil their commitments with the private sector. This analysis enabled us to identify measures that, if had been applied, would have improved the resilience of these contract during the economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Urban sprawl has a major impact on the environment, public health and the socio-economic evolution of cities. The causes are numerous, being mainly related to the generalized use of the automobile in modern cities. Urban sprawl has been especially relevant in US cities since the 1950s, rapidly spreading to other cities in the rest of the world. This paper studies the case of Spain using recent data. Spanish cities have grown rapidly over the 90s and 2000s. The country has completed the process of urbanization and has suffered the effects of a major real estate bubble. In this context, we are interested in measuring and explaining where and why urban sprawl has appeared in Spanish cities. Digital mapping carried out around the year 2000 providing full coverage of Spain is used to calculate an Urban Sprawl Index. It is applied to all urban areas and municipalities throughout the country, providing an objective, comparable measurement of sprawl and identifying which areas are most affected by this phenomenon. A second stage of analysis is conducted in an attempt to explain the causes of the differences in sprawl among Spanish cities with a regression model based on the literature. We have found that the cases most affected by sprawl are the latest urban developments on the Mediterranean coast as well as certain areas in the vicinity of large cities: the mountains to the north of Madrid and the coastline near Barcelona and Valencia. In some cases, urban sprawl is starting to become a problem for the environment and urban sustainability, with important consequences for the future evolution of the affected cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As social constructions, heritage properties require the participation of all their stakeholders, especially in the case of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) World Heritage Site is used as a test case for assessing the fulfilment of the local community’s development expectations, perceptions, and values. This paper is the first formal attempt to ascertain the opinions of residents in the surrounding villages — Ibeas de Juarros and Atapuerca — regarding the initiatives taken by the authorities, and the changes produced, since the site was included in the World Heritage List. The results show that many improvements can be made with the aim of democratizing the decision-making process, ensuring the involvement of the local community and improving their quality of life, in order to fulfil the spirit and recommendations of UNESCO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss findings from an analysis of accidents in concrete construction companies in Spain and to compare the accident rates of qualified and non-qualified workers. A total of 125,021 accidents between 2003 and 2008 involving both blue-collar and white-collar workers were analysed, comparing the variables of occupation, age, company staff, length of service, location of the accident, together with the severity of the accidents. Results showed that lack of experience in the first month is more significant in non-qualified workers and experienced supervisors and that head injuries are more likely to lead to fatalities. The most remarkable similarity was that fatal accidents to and from the worksite are a problem common to both groups of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging consensus among scholars of Muslim political and social identity suggests that Western Muslims live out an anti-essentialist critique of identity construction. Considering this view, this paper examines a cross-national comparison of British Bangladeshis in London and Spanish Moroccans in Madrid that solicits the perceptions of working-class Muslim men. While the results indeed reaffirm respondents' concomitant relationships to a variety of identity paradigms, interview content demonstrates that subjects' multiplicity is complicated by their desire to meet – not reject – the essentialist standards of belonging to the identity paradigms discursively available to them. Rather than defiantly cherry-picking preferred characteristics of religion, ethnicity and nationality, individuals' responses suggest that they are trying to fulfil perceived standards of authenticity. Such a contention helps explain the prevalence of Western Muslims' expressed and well-documented ‘identity crisis’, suggests the enduring relevance of identity essentialisms, and more broadly, complicates post-modern conceptions of identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and a balance of payments crisis. It argues that the distinctive features of bank business models and of national banking systems in Italy and Spain have considerable analytical leverage in explaining the different scenarios of the crises in each country. This ‘bank-based’ analysis contributes to the flourishing literature that examines changes in banking with a view to account for the differentiated impact of the global banking crisis first and the sovereign debt crisis in the euroarea later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between General Franco's agony (October/November 1975) and the constitution's approval (December 1978), European media reported intensively about the democratisation process in Spain. The present paper deals with its examination through the Radio della Svizzera di lingua italiana broadcasts. As the only Swiss Italian-speaking broadcaster, it tried to provide in-depth information and opinion on a country whose solid ties with Switzerland were based on economy, migration and tourism. The study of this non-commercial radio allows us to determine the way the democratisation was approached and portrayed for a Swiss audience and offers a genuine case for transnational historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the impact that the current economic crisis is having on the extent to which education protects migrants and natives from unemployment in Spain. To do so, we use random constant models on a pooled sample of respondents to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 2003 to 2012. Specifically, we analyse the market value of the educational credentials held by African, Latin American and East European migrants compared with Spanish males aged 16–50. Our conclusions indicate that inequality in the returns provided by education to migrants and natives has been growing fast in recent years. In other words, migrants have been less able to grant themselves an employment through their education than natives since 2008 when the Spanish economy started to contract and that this process has also been speeding up since. We also identify important differences within the migrant category: while the potential to prevent unemployment among better-educated migrants from Eastern Europe decreased during the economic recession, it is Africans and Latin Americans who are worse off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain has a highly partisan media system, with newspapers reaching self-selected partisan audiences and espousing explicitly partisan editorial preferences. Do the newspapers of the left and right differ in how they cover politics in ways that can be predicted by their partisan leanings? We review theories of issue ownership, journalistic standards, and information scarcity and test hypotheses derived from each. We find that the parties converge substantially in virtually every aspect of their coverage. Few differences emerge when we look at what topics are covered or in the dynamics of which topics gain attention over time. However, we confirm important differences across the papers when they make explicit reference to individual political parties. Journalistic norms result in a surprising focus on the faults of one’s enemies, however, rather than the virtues of one’s allies. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories in El País and El Mundo, Spain’s largest daily newspapers, from 1996 through 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In order to analyse the cultural values of Spanish liberalism, this paper describes the prohibition of corporal punishment in secondary education. The evolution of education laws and codes during the nineteenth century reveals great hope and confidence in building up an academic authority based exclusively on the power of reason and capable of ruling an ordered society. However, the study of documents found in the Instituto de Valencia historical archives highlights the difficulty of maintaining discipline as well as managing the political motivations of rebellious students, who demanded more autonomy from the academic authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper re-examines the work of postwar Spanish novelist, Elena Soriano, in light of Francoist censorship understood, after Bakhtin and Gadamer, as a practice that immures the forward movement of the word in search of ‘responsive understanding’. It also looks at the effects of the prevailing double moral standard in the censors' rulings taking as a case in point Soriano's trilogy,Mujer y hombre(1955). Last but not least, it raises questions about the role of a censor as a pre-publication reader of narratives driven by the need for a sympathetic addressee. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a hypothesis for understanding democratic stability based on the distinction between politicized and meritocratic bureaucracies. We argue that in a politicized administration, the professional careers of large numbers of government officials depend directly upon which party wins the elections. This increases the likelihood that the government will take opportunistic actions aimed at surviving in office at any cost; that is, benefiting core supporters at the expense of other groups. In turn, this may foster pre-emptive actions from the opposition, such as military coups. Conversely, in democracies with meritocratic administrations, incumbents are credibly constrained from undertaking partial policies because their hands are tied in terms of managing the staff policy of the state apparatus. Consequently, countries with meritocratic bureaucracies have greater prospects for democratic stability. Empirically, we illustrate the mechanisms with two well-documented cases of democratic transitions that enshrined a politicized administration – Spain (1876–1936) and Venezuela (1958–1998) – and one transition that kept a meritocratic bureaucracy, Spain (1975–). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Water scarcity is a threat to food production systems, with appropriate water management being a major part of the solution. From the adoption of the European Water Framework Directive to the latest proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy Horizon 2020, the strategic lines for establishing a balance between agriculture and water resources in the European Union have been defined, including an emphasis on water pricing. This paper discusses the situation of irrigated agriculture in semi-arid areas such as southern Spain in terms of water scarcity, highlighting the main advantages and disadvantages of water-pricing policies as a solution to more sustainable irrigation management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]