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After more than half a century of war, the announcement of the end of the Third Carlist War resulted in a veritable explosion of happiness and collective euphoria in Spain at the end of the 19th century. On 20 March 1876, Alfonso XII, nicknamed "The Peacemaker", made his triumphal entry into Madrid. The press of the time described the event as one of the happiest in the history of Spain. The aim of this paper is two fold: to contextualize and analyze the importance of the festivities and ephemeral decorations as a reflection of the social happiness of the moment and to analyze the symbolic and persuasive values of one of the ephemeral architectures erected for the occasion. As a final result, we demonstrate how ephemeral architecture and festivals were a source of happiness in the battered Spanish society of the last third of the 19th century, generating social welfare and happiness through art and the nationalist exaltation of the monarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional festivals in Andalusia, far from suffering diminished importance, seem to have experienced in recent times an unexpected revival, adapting to different social circumstances in order to continue generating enthusiasm, in spite of the pressures of the globalization that threatened to diminish their functionality. Evidence of this festival impulse is the proliferation of pilgrimages throughout the autonomous community of Andalusia, especially in the province of Huelva (Spain), as forms of collective expression of popular religiosity. Departing from a frame of functionalist analysis, the author establishes the usefulness of this analysis of religious ritual as a strategy to move closer to social reality. In this sense, the pilgrimage is analyzed as proof that participation in these rituals fulfills a function that goes beyond the strictly religious; it reinforces interpersonal social integration and strengthens social belief, at the same time highlighting the symbolic identification of the local participants with the patronage of certain images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex characteristics of New Spain's theatricality become forms of hegemonic domination, mainly when in contact with the Church--either in school festivals, or in autos de fe. These other forms of New Spain theatricality are genuine "representations", as an image of power and as theatrical entertainment, with their specific theatrical elements: stage, costumes, props, music, action... In this paper, I review several Mexican documents, related to the Jesuit school festivals (1600, 1602 and 1640) and autos de fe from 1646 to 1659, from this theatrical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The fiestas in celebration of the canonization of King Fernando III in 1671, organized by the cathedral of Seville, were among the most splendid in seventeenth-century Spain. The written account by Fernando de la Torre Farfán, illustrated by magnificent etchings, gives an unusually detailed description of the ephemeral architecture and decoration created for the occasion. Recent research gives insights into the extent to which this was a remarkable collaborative effort between the greatest artistic talents in Seville (Juan de Valdés Leal, Bernardo Simón de Pineda, Bartolomé Murillo, Pedro Roldán, Matías de Arteaga, and a host of other artists) and the canons of the cathedral, notably, Justino de Neve and Juan de Loaysa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]