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During the course of the Spanish Civil War, Francoists set up special teams to seize documents from organizations which had backed the Popular Front government. In the immediate wake of occupation, these squads would frequently enter towns and cities and appropriate lorry loads of paperwork which they ferried to Salamanca. Nationalist officials trawled through their copious bounty in order to scout out the names of opponents who could be punished for their activities in favour of the Republic. For good reason historians have viewed the Salamanca Papers as a stark example of state directed plunder. By focusing on the role of volunteers in willingly providing information to the authorities, this article seeks to complement the focus on the role of the state. The article also shows that the authorities exploited the information they gleaned to pick out and reward supporters as well as identify and punish enemies. The article further discusses some of the efforts made by Salamanca officials to return documents to Francoists. By examining the Salamanca Papers from these perspectives, the article seeks to throw light upon the close ideological and emotional identification between Francoist state officials and some of their eager supporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Manuscrits: Revista d'Historia Moderna is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Historia y Comunicación Social is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article offers the first scholarly account of the earliest recorded attempt at setting up a Spanish national tour in 1913, only ten years after the creation of the Tour de France. The paper demonstrates that the initiative for this failed project came from Catalonia, not Madrid, and that one man is to be singled out as its promoter: the pioneer sports journalist and enthusiast Narcis Masferrer Sala. Masferrer, a key figure in the configuration and the diffusion of modern sport in Spain, used his prominent positions as editor of the most influential sports daily of its times, Barcelona's El Mundo Deportivo, and as leader of the Spanish cycling governing body, to launch a campaign aimed at imitating the French tour. The first ever stage race held in Spain, the Volta a Tarragona (1908), and the first two editions of the still running Volta a Catalunya (1911 and 1912) were actually promoted by Masferrer as rehearsals of the projected Vuelta a Espana. Therefore, despite the contemporary rise of Catalan nationalism, they need not be understood as Catalanist initiatives, but rather the opposite: as just another failed example of the Catalan bourgeoisie's attempt at steering the modernization of Spain from its industrial and commercial capital, Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper's ambition is to explore how the material, social and symbolic legacy of conflicts that have taken place since the turn of the twentieth century may be made more resonant and comprehensible to visitors. We take the Spanish Civil War sites in Catalonia as emblematic of the issues and entrenchments which to date hinder their full potential as sites of reconciliation, awareness and identity-shaping for Europeans. After analysing their current situation and embedding in place strategies, which is remarkably different – one in a peripheral mountain location and one in the very core of Barcelona's touristscape –, our research examines the way in which historical memory is constructed, narrated and practiced in those spaces, underlining unsolved issues and contradictions. In retrospect, this research contributes to the critique of the very concept of historical memory, its patrimonialisation and the modes of social construction of heritage in the 'age of mobilities'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buried in the footnotes of his famous 1976 essay, Robert Brenner left the remark that Catalonia had experienced an agrarian transition to capitalism in parallel to England. This important claim has been completely forgotten by his followers of the political Marxist tradition, who since then have developed his views on the origins of capitalism. Building on the specialist literature, this article revisits the question of the Catalan transition through the prism of political Marxism and teases out its implications. In particular, it argues that the Catalan case illustrates the centrality of agency and subjectivity in the process of capitalist change. Contrary to Brenner's claim, this paper will argue that pre‐capitalist social property relations persisted in agriculture throughout the period of transition. Instead, the region's capitalist breakthrough was prompted by sociocultural struggles in its 18th‐century proto‐industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the Dalcroze method was introduced to Spain and became known there, more specifically in the Catalonia of theNoucentismemovement, and why it made the greatest impact and was more widely disseminated in this particular region of Spain. Following a summary of Dalcroze’s contributions to music education, an outline is given of how the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios or Committee for Extended Studies (the JAE, in Spanish) became a springboard for the method’s introduction in Catalonia through a grant awarded to Catalan musician and teacher Joan Llongueras Badía, even though the JAE had not shown much interest in its diffusion. It goes on to explain how the method’s use spread in Catalonia, partly thanks to the efforts of Joan Llongueras and his Institute for Rhythmic Gymnastics and partly as a result of the support that these efforts received in the political, philosophical, moral and aesthetic context of theNoucentismemovement – which, the paper argues, explains why the method’s impact was much greater in Catalonia than in the rest of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research on violence against civilians during wars has emphasized war-related factors (such as territorial control or the characteristics of armed groups) over political ones (such as ideological polarization or prewar political competition). Having distinguished between irregular and conventional civil wars and between direct and indirect violence, I theorize on the determinants of direct violence in conventional civil wars. I introduce a new data set of all 1,062 municipalities of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and I show that the degree of direct violence against civilians at the municipal level goes up where prewar electoral competition between rival political factions approaches parity. I also show that, following the first round of violence, war-related factors gain explanatory relevance. In particular, there is a clear endogenous trend whereby subsequent levels of violence are highly correlated with initial levels of violence. In short, the paper demonstrates that an understanding of the determinants of violence requires a theory combining the effect of political cleavages and wartime dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of new states has always been an uncertain process. Yet with the emergence of global war and the destabilization of the political categories of modernity, state founding has become even more indeterminate. This paper examines how the contemporary conditions of endless war and sovereign instability thwart the performative acts of declarations of independence, especially, and paradoxically, when they result from a peaceful referendum. Drawing from Derrida's analysis of the aporetic nature of declarations, I focus on how the globalization of war has actualized this aporetic nature by turning the creation of new states into permanently unsettled events. I illustrate this state of affairs with the 2017 (non-)Declaration of Independence of Catalonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Spain’s neutrality during the First World War, 2000 Spaniards (a thousand of them from Catalonia) fought with the French Foreing Legion. The majority of them were scarcely politicized immigrants living and working in France when the conflict broke out. Catalan separatism used the enlistment of those natives from Catalonia for propaganda purposes. Separatists aimed to internationalize the nationalist cause and sought support from the Allies. The creation of a Catalan Committee of Brotherhood in Barcelona and a Spanish Patronate of Brotherhood in Madrid distorted the life of those combatants. Through the correspondence maintained with one or both organizations the volunteers from Catalonia became aware of their national identity. They realized that modelling their national adscription to the Spanish or the Catalan project could be useful to obtain parcels, with first aid products, food, money and newspapers, from one or both committees. This paper explores this process and shows the instrumentalization of self-identities during the First World War among Spaniard combatants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Utilitarian greyware ceramics are one of the most abundant artefacts at rural sites in Medieval Catalonia, Spain, and were manufactured by numerous long-lived production centres. The stylistic homogeneity of this class of pottery has traditionally restricted its contribution to the archaeological interpretation of the region. However, recent scientific analyses of excavated kiln sites are offering new perspectives via the establishment of compositional reference groups for greyware ceramics. Using one such dataset, from the large workshop of Cabrera d'Anoia, this paper examines the distribution and consumption of utilitarian grey pottery at 25 Medieval sites across Catalonia. The study reveals a pattern of several regional production centres distributing their goods to small villages within the surrounding countryside and, in some cases, competing for rural markets. This is interpreted in terms of the mechanisms by which greyware pottery was distributed, as well as the socio-political and religious influences on its supply and demand in Medieval Catalonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the role of newspapers and journals in constructing the public images of the mammoth in Catalonia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, paying special attention to the visual power of descriptions, pictures and cartoons of this and other ancient species that increasingly appeared in the press. As palaeontology became a 'public science,' the extinct species gained status not least because it could be imbued with multiple meanings that moved between the scientific and public spheres. The visualizations of the animal contributed to metaphorically reinforcing and confronting ideas of political and social scope, like the notions of modernity and national identity, which were of great relevance in Barcelona at the turn of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tiempos Modernos is the property of Tiempos Modernos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper looks at studies which highlight how, in the first phase of expansion of the industrial system in Catalonia, Spain, the greater harshness of industrial work and reproductive burdens led married women to keep their jobs right up to the moment when their wages could be replaced by their children's. They could then devote their time to the non-remunerated domestic tasks that were considered more important than income. Therefore, women's work changed throughout the family life-cycle, depending mostly on the ratio of active/inactive family members. From the mid-19th-century to the first third of the 20th century, Barcelona maintained a diversified and flexible demand for female labor. European historiography has gathered evidence suggesting that employment strategies also changed on the opportunities available to women in the labor market, and on cultural, ideological and institutional factors. The author argues that more research is needed into what underlies the differing intensities with which working-class families resorted to married women and child labor in various places in Catalonia.

Copyright of Historia y Politica: Ideas, Procesos y Movimientos Sociales is the property of Departamento De Historia del Pensamiento y de los Moviemientos Sociales y Politicos (Madrid) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Manuscrits: Revista d'Historia Moderna is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Manuscrits: Revista d'Historia Moderna is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The use of gold coinage in the Medieval Catalonian counties has received considerable academic attention over the past forty years. A crucial factor, the characterisation of individuals using gold currency as their basis of accountancy, however, has to date been neglected. The main aim of this paper is to tackle this issue on the basis of the Diplomatari of Santes Creus. After crossing the data with those extracted from seven other documental sets in the Catalonian counties, the kinship and social links and the properties of 86% of users of gold currency in Santes Creus have been identified. Results show that accounting solutions based on gold weight or gold coinage were essentially used by a closed and not too extensive group of magnates of variable status, connected by kinship, vassalage and proximity links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anuario Musical is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article analyzes the transition of the Catalan political culture from elite parties to mass parties, after the introduction of the universal adult male suffrage in Spain in 1891. The author presents an historical overview of the political practices adopted by the elite of Catalan political parties in order to adjust to the system changes. The author suggests that the power system known as "Caciquismo" had to adapt itself to the new context, and became political patronage. The author focuses his investigation on the city of Manresa as a model of the urban Catalonia at that time.

The history of Catalonia has involved a complex articulation between the national and the social questions. The history of Catalonia must be understood in terms of the complex divorces and marriages between Catalanism and the labor movement that has presented major strategic crossroads and struggles for the political leadership of the country, that overlap with the internal fights inside the labor movement and Catalanism. The currents of the labor movement that has best dealt with the national question in the history of Catalonia have been those that have understood its political and strategic dimension and the need not leave it in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the middle classes, while seeking to develop an independent approach to the question. This article explores the link between the national and the social question in the history of Catalonia since late 19th Century till the rise of contemporary independence movement, through the strategic debates of the labor movement. First, it begins by formulating an overview of how the both issues have been linked. Second, it presents a historical overview in several phases: from the end of the 19th century to the Second Republic; the Republican period (1931–1939) and the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975). Finally, it briefly looks at the post-Franco period, culminating with an analysis of the phase that began in 2012 with the rise of the independence movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New agro-ecosystem model including Farmland, Livestock and Farming Community funds. • The system optimized energy profile enhances the information-as-structure indicator. • The indicator is useful for understanding past agricultural landscapes. • As well as it is a tool to compare different trends in agrarian systems management. In this paper we propose an approach to understand how different farmer's goals can contribute to structure cultural landscapes and how the information-as-structure held in energy flows within farm systems can be measured. We start from a historical case study located in a Mediterranean landscape in the Vallès County (Catalonia, 1860) and apply an optimization model by using a socio-metabolic approach that responds to three different strategies at farm gate: maximizing population, minimizing labour, and maximizing income. The modelled farm pattern of energy flows, the information indicator and the landscape structure that would be obtained under each optimization strategy are then compared with actual historical data. The results obtained confirm that it is the farmers' know-how and culture what allows to manage the energy distribution into the farm system in order to maintain a sustainable management of the territory. We take lessons in terms of socioecological transition analysis, and to offer novel insights on how information-as-structure driven by farmers' intentionality, knowledge and cultural practices plays a key role in structuring cultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the impact of insecure property rights on the behaviour of owners of land before the Spanish Civil War. The theoretical literature on land reform argues that legal threats to the status quo determine agrarian organization, with owners selling land and moving to other asset classes or engaging in large‐scale substitution of sharecroppers and tenants with wage labourers. This study, which uses municipal data on tenant evictions in Catalonia in 1934–5, does not find that uncertainty over property rights in the 1930s meant that owners tried to substitute tenants with wage labourers, especially in the case of the controversial rabassa morta contracts on vineyards. Here it is argued that after 40 years of organizational adjustment to shocks related to phylloxera infestations, legal changes, urbanization, and changes in relative prices, by the 1930s the margin for adjustment was small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Second Republic of Spain (1931-1939) and within the framework of ambitious social reform, the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia launched a social and educational assistance system. This new system would be independent, modern, and capable of surpassing the traditional welfare system based on religious charity that was predominant in Spain at the time. One of the initiatives performed to obtain funding consisted of the sale of Christmas seals, whose earnings would be allocated to the fight against childhood tuberculosis. The Segell Pro Infància organisation was created for this purpose. This article analyses the origins of this institution within the socio-political context of Catalonia during the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, in addition to its work and activities during its brief existence. The series of actions financed by Segell were primarily directed at improving institutions that provided a social welfare system, such as crèches and nursery schools. In this analysis, the commitment of early twentieth-century Catalan nationalism to social and educational modernisation, in addition to its development of social justice policies, is revealed. This reform fits into the framework of a broader pro-sovereignty project in which Catalonia would build state structures independent of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dynamics of internal resettlement in times of civil war by using a novel dataset of all municipalities of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), which includes information on the total number of internally displaced from other parts of Spain that sought refuge in Catalan localities during the civil war. The dataset, which also incorporates information on relevant covariates, is built with a combination of primary (i.e. archival) and secondary sources. The results of the multivariate analyses indicate that political identities have a significant impact on resettlement: people tend to relocate to places where they can find others who share their political and/or ethnic identity; we see this reflected in political and ethnic alignments at the municipal level. In addition, the article uncovers a relevant dynamic in the diffusion of violence at the local level: the arrival of internal refugees in a new locality may have the unintended effect of increasing levels of direct violence due to its role in disseminating credible news of atrocities committed by the other side. The implications of this study go beyond the Spanish case and make a contribution to unpacking dynamics of violence and internal displacement in civil wars. The article also sheds light on some of the mechanisms by which refugee flows can play a role in the diffusion of violence throughout a given country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the development of amateur cinema in Catalonia in the 1930s is key to understanding the role that film played in Spain’s complex engagement with modernity. I pose amateur cinema as a forgotten avant-garde that spearheaded the emergence of film culture beyond the commercial screen in regions with minor film industries. I examine the particular visual regime fostered by these filmmakers, the distribution of social bodies in their films, and their class-oriented view of reality. I argue that their films embodied the anxiety of a dominant class faced with the reality that public life suddenly had to be shared with the so-called masses who were advancing to the foreground of society. Therefore, I understand the cultural production of Catalan amateurs as a reflection of the archaic class relations that were fueling radicalization in the Spanish sociopolitical realm. The amateur archive is thus a necessary repository to aid our understanding of how moving images became the most widespread form of cultural representation—but also social domination and indoctrination—throughout the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no consensus among specialists in agricultural contracts over whether the long-term inefficiencies that classical economists attributed to sharecropping actually exist. This article maintains that they do exist and are partly caused by the fact that sharecropping is hardly compatible with the tenant being compensated for improvements, viticulture being the main historical exception. In line with recent contributions to the sharecropping literature, the article contends that the widely held belief among scholars of agricultural contracts that sharecropping was very frequent in Europe's vineyards is incorrect. However, it also provides evidence of an issue whose importance has gone largely unnoticed: prior to the twentieth century, many of the European vineyards worked by sharecroppers had been created by the sharecroppers themselves, through contracts which entitled them to compensation. Those contracts abounded while viticulture depended basically on two inputs, land and labour. When viticulture became a heavy consumer of capital, they were rapidly abandoned, but not in Catalonia, with a paradoxical result: the Catalan rabassa morta contract, which for centuries had made it possible to eliminate both the long- and short-term inefficiencies of sharecropping, ended up becoming an obstacle to overcoming the short-term inefficiencies. The article discusses why that happened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catalonia was the only Mediterranean region among the early followers of the British industrial revolution. The roots of this process can be traced back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the Catalan economy became integrated into international trade, and a successful printed calico industry concentrated in the city of Barcelona. Although the factory system was largely adopted by the cotton industry in the 1840s, the diffusion of the spinning jenny in Catalonia had occurred earlier, in the 1790s. In line with Allen, this article explores whether relative factor prices played a role in the widespread adoption of the spinning jenny in Catalonia. First, series of real wages in Barcelona are supplied for the period 1500-1808. Second, the prices of labour and capital are compared and the potential profitability of the adoption of the spinning jenny is analysed. Findings show that although Catalonia was not a high wage economy in the way that Britain was in the second half of the eighteenth century, evidence from the cotton spinning sector confirms the relevance of relative factor prices in the adoption of new technology. Within the booming cotton sector after the 1780s, high wages created strong incentives for the adoption of the labour-saving spinning jenny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the emergence of winemaking cooperatives in Catalonia, one of southern Europe’s main winegrowing regions. It analyses the stimuli that led to the creation of winemaking cooperatives in the early twentieth century and the difficulties that they faced in a depressed wine market, such as financing the construction of winemaking facilities, the governance and organisation of cooperative services, and marketing their produce. I explore the reasons why many more wine cooperatives were created in Catalonia in early twentieth century than in Spain’s other winegrowing regions and I try to identify the obstacles that hindered their further development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we propose to study social change that took place in the eighteenth century, a period of demographic growth in which increasing difficulties of access to land could have led to greater downward mobility and proletarization. However, our hypothesis is that this was also a period of middle class emergence in some rural regions. In the studied case (the Girona region in north-eastern Catalonia), after significant growth of the number of treballadors (literally rural labourers), supposedly the humblest and poorest group, dowries and probate inventories indicate that some of them could have improved their positions significantly. This idea clashes with the traditional view of social historians for two reasons. Firstly, because it is often assumed that Ancien Régime societies experienced few important structural changes and, even less so, the emergence of middle groups from the working class. Secondly, because even though it is accepted that a general improvement in living standards could have occurred in some areas of Europe, the historiography tends to exclude regions of southern Europe from this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the cultural policy in Catalonia, Spain, during the nineteenth century that was promoted by civil associations with independence from government agencies. Topics discussed include tensions between Catalonia and the Spanish central government that resulted in the formation of associations by civilians in the region to operate without any relation with political agendas; a cultural policy of bourgeois society that emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century; and cultural agenda of an association of Catalan architects called Grup d'Arquitectes i Tècnics Catalans per al Progrés de l'Arquitectura Contemporània (GATCPAC).

Spanish emigration to the Americas during the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century gave rise to the figure of the “indiano” or “americano” in Spain – those men who returned to the peninsula with huge fortunes. In this article, we look at the roles played by indianos in Catalonia's financial development. Our research indicates that returnees not only made important investments in the Catalan economy; they exerted an impact that, although harder to quantify, was equally significant: the deployment of their human capital, constituted by extensive international commercial and financial expertise and participation in social and business networks, evidenced in multiple alliances and businesses set up in the peninsula. Centered on the financial sector, the article shows that indianos were thus key players in the modernization of Catalan finances through the first half of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale is the property of Berghahn Books and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Increasingly fervent expressions of anti-Catalanism by Spanish institutions and individuals are one of the reasons behind the Catalans’ increasing support for independence. Negative categorisations of the Catalans partly revolve around the use of Catalan as the main medium of instruction in education, portrayed as an aggressive attempt to rid the region of the Spanish language. This specific form of anti-Catalanism is examined through the television documentaryCiudadanos de segunda,which constructs an unambiguous condemnation of Catalan language policies out of seemingly balanced interview material. The film is analysed in the light of theories of moral panic as applied to language issues by Sally Johnson (1999) and others. The analysis reveals that the documentary bears the hallmarks of an attempt to create a moral panic, which, although not fully successful, did contribute to an on-going campaign of sensitization waged by the right-wing Spanish media to promote negative images of Catalonia to other Spaniards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on recent attempts to explain divergent uses of sub-state nationalism to push for policies of assimilation or multiculturalism and drive popular support for independence. It analyses the dynamics of discourses and policies in Spain before, during and after peak times of identity politics to provide a more nuanced understanding of the conditions leading to the activation of identity-driven policies. Substantive ethnographic evidence is presented to explain recent alterations to national discourses of identity, surprising reversals of immigration policies, and the modulation of Catalan and Basque independence movements. The main finding is that both identity discourses and resulting policies depend on the affinity for identity politics at the sub-state level, and this affinity is in large part primed by the popular perception of how secure sub-state national identity is against the ‘official’ state narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This contribution examines party competition between the Catalan Convergence and Union (CiU) and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), two substate nationalist parties, and the statewide governing party based on the degree to which they ally in Spain's statewide parliament. It demonstrates that party competition during statewide minority governments is quite cooperative, though with variation, and statewide majority governments are associated with less cooperation. The weight of properiphery stances in the nationalist parties’ manifestos does not explain the patterns of party competition. In part, their behavior is associated with opportunities to influence policy and interparty competition in their respective regions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On 31 January 1911, a terrible and unpredicted sea storm affected most of the coast from Catalonia to Valencia, causing nearly 140 deaths, mainly among the fishing population. As a result of this storm, a sea port was constructed in Arenys. This article analyses the decision to build it in one of the few villages on the Catalan coast with almost no fishermen, a village in which the marine tradition ended half a century before the disaster. It examines the management of this catastrophe as a process of heritagization of maritime culture by the local elites. Of particular interest is the place of attracting tourists in the decision-making of these elites. To provide an insight into the political economy of maritime culture, the study also assesses the commemoration of the disaster in 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the economic and financial aspects of the war between Spain and Holland in Catalonia, Spain, from 1652-1679. The author gives particular focus to the financing of the war by the Spanish monarchy and comments on the taxation of the citizens of Catalonia to fund the troops. He also considers the conflicts and tensions with France under Louis XIV as well as with Portugal during this time period. The role of the Spanish monarchy as well as the viceroys in Catalonia is also explored.

Princess of our noble Catalan land Oh Virgin of the mountain… pious Mother of this land that has always loved you, make it great and powerful1Over the course of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain (1939–1975), we can trace a remarkable transformation in the position of the Catholic Church in the historic territory of Catalonia. Subject to deep-rooted anti-clericalism, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the Church found itself the target of an unprecedented assault. The victory of Franco’s Nationalist forces in 1939 restored the Church, yet due to its Spanish Nationalist ideology, sought the ending of the Catalan Catholic tradition. However, over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, the Catalan Church was able to undertake a cautious reconstruction of the indigenous religious and cultural movement. This revival would begin to transform the Church’s position in Catalan society to the point where, by the mid-1960s, it was possible to assert that anti-clericalism was no more. The Church became a key element in the revival of Catalan nationalism and an important component to the opposition in late anti-Francoism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using the number of trademarks registered as an indicator, this article explores the functioning of the economies of product differentiation that characterise industrial districts. In order to assess the role of districts in the creation of trademarks, the analysis focuses on knitwear production, a highly competitive industry and a pioneer in brand creation in Spain, and examines the development of the country's two main knitwear districts during the twentieth century. The article presents empirical evidence from trademark and business records to show that more trademarks were created in these two districts than in other areas. The imitation and rivalry characteristic of industrial districts favoured the proliferation of trademarks and encouraged firms to diversify their products through the creation of new brands. It also suggests that the success of the brands was uneven and depended on the industrial structure in each district and the kind of product specialisation. In conclusion, not only were the industrial districts an important factor in brand creation, but brand consolidation was decisive in raising levels of competitiveness in knitwear districts in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article refers to the book "World Design" by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and focuses on the branding of design with a national cultural identity in Catalonia, Spain during the 1980s. The perception of collective, regional, and national identities, the political transition in Spain from a dictatorship to a democracy, the design, manufacture, and consumption of goods in the context of furniture design, globalization and international interest in local production, and the influence of individuals and institutions on the development of national and regional characteristics.

The Peace councils which took place throughout west Francia from the late tenth century have long been recognized as complex political, social and ritual events. Discussions of the Peace, however, often neglect the local factors which informed these councils. The earliest councils in Catalonia were characterized by remarkable variety in both their organization and in their objectives. Some elements of these councils reflect longstanding regional traditions. Earlier provincial synods, for example, shared many of the same concerns expressed at Peace councils. Both synods and councils testify to an impressive level of regional episcopal co-operation. The 1027 Council of Toulouges provides a rich opportunity to explore the microsocial and micropolitical alliances and animosities which motivated one council. The monastery of Sant Miquel de Cuixà, whose abbot organized this council and two others, had been developing a network of mills and irrigation canals near the council's site. The choice of the council's site was motivated, in part, by the desire to secure Cuixà's grip on these property rights. The mills near Toulouges are an example of the local impulses which informed early Peace councils; understanding these impulses can contribute to current debates about the Feudal Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]