Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies

Founded in1969 to promote research in all aspects and epochs of Iberian history, the Society
for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies conducts annual meetings, provides a forum
for scholars of Iberian Affairs, and publishes this Bulletin each spring and fall.
Annual Membership Dues

Students
$7.00

U.S. Members
$20.00
Overseas Members
$23.00
Institutions
$25.00
All information concerning membership should be addressed to the Membership Secretary:
Andrew H. Lee, 310 First Street, Westfield, NJ 07090 <ANDREW.LEE@NYU.EDU>.

Jess Cruz
Department of History
University of Delaware
Olivia Remie Constable (2010) Margaret Greer (2009)
University of Notre Dame
Duke Universiity
Ben Ehlers (2010)
University of Georgia

Organization
Officers
General SecretaRy

Executive Committee

Sandie Holguin (2009)

University of Oklahoma

Elizabeth Lehfeldt (2010) Isabel dos Guimaraes S (2010)

Cleveland State University Towson University
General Editor of the Bulletin Membership Secretary
(Ex officio)
(Ex officio)
Daniel A. Crews (2009) Andrew H. Lee
University of Central Missouri New York University
Web Editors
(Ex officio)
James D'Emilio
University of South Florida
Ana Varela
University of California, San Diego
James Tueller (2009) A. Katie Harris (2011)
Brigham Young University Hawaii
University of California, Davis

Nominating
Committee

Michael Levine (2010)

University of Akron

General Editor

Book Review Editors

The SSPHS Bulletin

Daniel A. Crews
University of Central Missouri

Spanish History
Mart Vicente,
History Department
University of Kansas

Production Editors

Portuguese History
Rita Costa Gomes,
History Department
Towson University

Ruth McKay,
San Francisco, CA

Print Copy
Constance Mathers,
Ashland, VA

Electronic Copy
Holly Davenport,
Information Technology
University of Central Missouri

The SSPHS Bulletin is published two times each year and is distributed
to the members of the Society. The editors welcome news about research
in progress, recent publications, archival notes, bibliographic essays,
short reviews of recent publications, and notice of personal honors.
Substantial funding for the publication is provided by University of
Central Missouri, Warrensburg, Missouri. All correspondence regarding its content should be addressed to the editors.
Back Issues

Copies of back issues of the Bulletin are available at $5.25 per issue.
Make all checks payable to the Society for Spanish and Portuguese
Historical Studies and place all orders with:
Carla Rahn Phillips
Department of History
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis MN 55455
Microfilm and Microfiche of the Bulletin from its inception in 1969 is
available. Direct inquiries to the General Secretary.

 CONTENTS

Message from the General Secretary.........................................................4

How Womens History has Transformed the Study of
Early Modern Spain.....................................................................................5
Does the Dos de Mayo Matter?.............................................................19
A Collection of Memories: Our Mentor Helen Nader...........................28
Book Reviews..............................................................................................32
Bulletin Board..............................................................................................48
Research Reports.........................................................................................50

Jess Cruz

Message from the General Secretary

The eve of the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Society is an exciting
and challenging moment to serve as its General Secretary. I am glad to take on this
responsibility in an organization that is maturing with solid foundations thanks to
the dedication and enthusiasm of its membership. My first order of business is to
congratulate everyone for this success, and especially my predecessor in this office,
Ida Altman. Thank you, Ida, for your hard work and unflagging dedication to our
common cause. You have added new beams and bricks to strengthen our structure,
and I am most grateful.
The success of the 39th annual meeting in Fort Worth is the best evidence of
the health and strength of our society. We thank Jodi Campbell and Juan Carlos SolaCorbacho of Texas Christian University for the superb organization of the meeting
and Jessica Boon of Southern Methodist University Perkins School of Theology for
assisting Jodi with the coordination of the program. There were a total of twenty-three
panels, about a hundred panelists, and strong attendance at all conference events. The
contents of sessions were reasonably well-balanced: forty-seven per cent focused on
early modern themes, thirty-five per cent on modern, nine percent on medieval, and the
rest on historiography and pedagogy. While early modern Iberia continues to occupy
the lions share of our field, it is encouraging to find an increasing number of young
scholars interested in the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I believe
this represents a shift of interest that is undoubtedly connected to recent political and
economic developments of contemporary Spain and Portugal. Today it is easier to
place the modern history of both countries in the context of the European experience
than it was only two decades ago. We need to think about strategies to attract more
medievalists to the meeting: the high caliber but sparse representation in Fort Worth
does not reflect the presence of the field in American academia.
Mara Jess de Pablos, Executive Director of the U.S.-Spain Fulbright Commission was our invited keynote speaker. This year the Commission commemorates the
50th anniversary of the signing of the Agreement of Cooperation between Spain and
the United States. With eloquence, clarity, and enthusiasm, she reminded us of the long
term beneficial impact of this exchange for both sides. Her speech was a lesson on the
history of cultural and scientific reciprocity between Spain and the United States since
October 1958. De Pablos highlighted the fact that Senator J. William Fulbrights goal
of converting nations into peoples and in translating ideologies into human aspirations has been fully realized in the case of the collaboration with Spain. What better
evidence could there be of this reality than the presence of former Fulbright Fellows
among the audience?
Downtown Fort Worth, with its variety of walking distance restaurants, cafes,
and other amenities, provided an appropriate environment for this event. The visit to
the Meadows Museum was a suitable and welcome field trip. While the collection itself
justified the visit, the history behind the assembly of the permanent collection and the
temporary exhibit narrated by Mark Rogln and Amanda Dotseth was fascinating.
Who would have guessed that the big hole in one of the tables from the altarpiece of
the Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo was made by a shell from one of General Wellingtons
cannons during the siege of the city in 1810?
Looking forward, the meetings for the next two years are set. Next year the
Society will gather in Kansas City, Missouri (April 2-5, 2009). We want to thank the
local organizers for 2009: Marta Vicente, Luis Corteguera (both of the University of
Kansas) and Dan Crews (University of Central Missouri) with the assistance of Amber
Clifford. Antonio Cazorla (Trent University) has graciously offered to host the 2010
meeting in Ottawa. Since we do not yet have any firm commitments for 2011, I invite
members to submit proposals.

Dan Crews has diligently served as the editor of the Bulletin for many years.
He has worked tirelessly to maintain this key publication of the Society and I want
to express my most sincere gratitude for a job well done. The survival of the Bulletin
is also due to the hard work of Holly Davenport, Marta Vicente, Constance Mathers,
and Rita Costa Gomes. While the current format of the Bulletin has served us well over
the years, Dan Crews and other members involved in the publication have expressed
a desire to reconsider its format and content. This issue was brought to the Business
Meeting and is a challenge that we will address over the coming years.
Andrew Lee, who has served as Membership Secretary for the last two years,
brought an important issue to the Executive Committee and the Business Meeting.
To his surprise he discovered that our IRS registration expired years ago, an irregular
situation that needs to be corrected. Those who attended the meeting agreed that he
should consult an expert to study a solution. After speaking with a non-profit tax accountant, Andrew has been advised that we should start over with a new name. We will
need to incorporate in a state and then ask the IRS for non-profit status. The Executive
Committee is in the process of discussing alternative names. Once we come up with
a proposal the vote of all the members will be required.
Two motions from the Executive Committee to amend the Constitution were
unanimously approved at the annual Business Meeting. The purpose of the amendments is to create two new positions--Vice General Secretary and Treasurer--and to
institutionalize the supervision of the Prize endowments. In accordance with the
constitutional norm the proposed amendments were published in the previous issue
of the Bulletin, three months prior to the Fort Worth Business Meeting. The next step
will be to run a referendum to solicit the approval of members. In the coming months
everyone will receive a ballot to vote on a new name for the Society and to approve
or reject the amendments.

________________
How Womens History has Transformed the Study of Early Modern Spain
At this point, formulating an essay on the state of the study of women in early
modern Spain is a daunting task.1 We are fortunate to have witnessed the spectacular
growth and remarkable success of scholars in the field. For nearly two decades now,
early modern womens history has not only brought the opportunities for female agency
and the constraints on womens lives into clearer perspective, it has also expanded our
understanding of early modern politics, society, and culture. There is a substantial
quantity of literature to examine, and I agonized over the possibility of leaving out
the critical work of one colleague or another. So, I decided that rather than compose
a traditional literature review, I would offer a broader discussion of how the study of
women has transformed scholarly work on early modern Spain and consider some
possibilities for future research.

Unlike French womens history, which emerged out of social and labor history, early modern Spanish womens history has its roots in the study of religion and
religious literature. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of innovative literary
scholars and historians looked beyond Spanish historys focus on demographic and
economic history and undertook examinations of the lives and writings of religious
women, especially Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). By focusing on women and on the
gendered nature of womens experience, their work began to transform the study of
the early modern period. They offered new perspectives on female piety and replaced
the traditional vision of a virulently misogynist Catholic Reformation that forced pious women into convents and burned mystics at the stake with a much more refined
picture of the interaction between the Church and its female believers.

I want to thank Aurelio Espinosa and Jodi Bilinkoff for their help on this essay.

Allyson Poska,
Mary Washington University

Based on these pioneering studies of Teresa, the reformer/saint has come

to epitomize the complex relationship between a religious woman and the Spanish
Church. Their explorations of her texts and investigations of her life have revealed her
public and private struggles as she negotiated the tumultuous religious landscape of
the sixteenth century. Gendered analysis has at least refined, if not completely altered,
many interpretations of her writings. She no longer exemplifies feminine submission
to clerical authority. In fact, without losing sight of either her monastic vows or her
femininity, she steadfastly resisted challenges to her spiritual endeavors. Working
within a masculine tradition, her ideas about female spirituality combined a keen
articulation of the feminine with an assertion of female centrality and independence.
The implications of her Carmelite reform extended beyond the cloister, pressuring the
Church to reconsider the role of women in the Catholic Reformation more broadly.
The studies of Teresa have encouraged a series of investigations of other nuns,
mystics, and holy women. Even at the height of the Catholic Reformation, as some
women retreated into a religious sphere carefully supervised by male clerics, plenty of
others engaged in an array of very controversial acts including internal prayer, visions,
raptures, and revelations in the pursuit and fulfillment of their spiritual perfection.
At a time when such displays should have been increasingly dangerous, womens
religious enthusiasm flourished. Such experiences were both cathartic and painful.
Driven by forces beyond their control, religious women often struggled with the conflicts generated by their intense spirituality. Their deep faith and mystical experiences
often threatened their relationships with superiors, other religious, and family. More
importantly, they had difficulty reconciling their often less than orthodox religious
activities with the teachings of the Church to which they had dedicated themselves.
Many religious women felt compelled to record their spiritual experiences, but
the relationship between religious women and their texts was complicated. Although
some women viewed the creation of texts as integral to their spiritual development,
others found it forced upon them by men eager to share and sometimes manipulate
their pious expression. At its best, writing provided these women with an outlet for
their religious messages and a sense of spiritual authority otherwise denied them.
The formulation of written works gave them entry into the Churchs largely (but not
exclusively) masculine tradition of textual authority, but also created new and complex relationships with confessors and amanuenses. At its worst, the use of the written
word could also be dangerous, as authors suffered through painful interrogations
from superiors and Inquisitors. However, religious women displayed remarkable
independence in the face of ecclesiastical attempts to suppress their works. They
composed powerful expositions of their spiritual reflections and often transgressed
both social norms and the commands of ecclesiastical authorities in order to share
their experiences with others.
The willingness of women to resist the constraints imposed upon them by the
Church is most evident in recent works on the Inquisition. The Inquisition was, quite
clearly, a masculine institution. Not only was it staffed exclusively by men, but by
far and away the majority of those brought before its tribunals were men; however,
because of the work of womens historians, we know much more about the interactions
between individual religious women and Inquisitors. The most important lesson of that
research has been that the Inquisition did not successfully squelch heterodox female
spirituality during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact, these studies have
demonstrated that religious women were remarkably successful in their opposition
to, manipulation of, and negotiations with Inquisitors over spiritual issues. Rather
than confess to accusations of heresy and recant their beliefs, most women stoically
defended their connections to the holy and the correctness of their faith and few were
convicted of heresy. Indeed, ironically, the Inquisition served less as a mechanism to
stifle female mystical activity than as a means to preserve their experiences and ideas

for successive generations. Although it is impossible to know how many womens

search for faith was hindered or altered by the intervention of religious superiors, over
the course of the early modern period, few women faced serious punishment for their
actions or beliefs and Spanish society remained deeply connected to female religious
and their spiritual endeavors.
The fact that some women were able to hold their own against charges of heresy did not mean that the Church was entirely unsuccessful in its attempts to control
female spirituality. As the Catholic Reformation progressed and the Church worked
to control the nature of and access to the sacred, women, much more than men, faced
increased skepticism about the sources and veracity of their spiritual experiences.
Accusations of false sanctity proved to be particularly dangerous for women. Such
charges generated tremendous anxiety on the part of believers. Playing on fears of
female susceptibility, authorities systematically redefined some womens experiences
as charlatanism. Similarly, charges of demonic possession could transform a womans
mystical relationship with the divine into a profane accommodation of the devil.

This intense interest in the lives of female religious has led to one of the most
important contributions of the scholarship on Spanish women: the publication of editions
and translations of womens writings (religious and otherwise). By bringing womens
writings to a broader audience, these works have revived interest in religious history
and influenced new investigations into the role Spanish women played as creators of
culture. Not long ago, women were almost invisible in the study of Spains Golden
Age. However, that situation has changed dramatically. Due to the hard work of a
number of scholars, Spanish womens writings are well represented in the University
of Chicago Press series, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Moreover, such work
has yielded even more texts. The search for the writings of religious women led to the
rediscovery of a significant number of works by lay women. Beginning with Mara de
Zayas, women writers became a part of the scholarly discourse and literature scholars
are now working on texts by dozens of Spanish women.2 Moreover, by making the
writings of early modern Spanish women accessible to undergraduates, they have
generated interest from a whole new generation of potential scholars.
Another outgrowth of the study of womens interaction with the Church has
been a reassessment of convent life. The experiences of particular women revealed
that convents might encourage enclosure, asceticism, and submission, but just as often
female religious found opportunities for autonomy, empowerment, and resistance
within those same walls. Conventual reform in Spain predated the Tridentine decrees
by more than 50 years, yet even with that lead time attempts to impose claustration
and the enforcement of stricter rules met with only a modicum of success. Although
some convents readily adopted a more reclusive life, ecclesiastical reformers could not
overcome the reality that convents were more than housing for unattached women,
pious or not. Convents were intricately linked to the outside world as landlords, administrators, and producers of agricultural goods. Their familial connections regularly
engaged them in local and national politics, as well as more mundane family affairs.
Moreover, many women saw no contradiction between their spiritual responsibilities
within the convent and their obligations beyond the convent walls. In fact, rather than
submit to strict claustration, many convents stonewalled authorities attempts to restrict
interactions with the outside world. Although they may have frustrated ecclesiastical
officials, through both their collusion and their resistance, female religious became key
participants in the process of Catholic renewal.

The existence of GEMELA (Grupo de Estudios sobre la Mujer en Espaa y las

Amricas, pre-1800), formerly known as the Asociacin de Escritoras de Espaa y las
Amricas (1300-1800), and the enthusiastic attendance at its biennial meetings attest to the
dynamism of this field. For more information, see their website: www.gemela.org

The interest in womens religious activity has also encouraged investigation

into the experiences of New Christian women. Like their Old Christian counterparts,
the spiritual lives of Conversas and Moriscas were the products of ongoing negotiation.
Certainly, they were often subjected to intense repression; yet, the research indicates
that Conversas and Moriscas were far from passive victims of Spanish anti-Semitism.
Depending on their situations, women were central either to the perpetuation of their
religious and cultural traditions or to the assimilation of their families. For those who
attempted to maintain their cultural identities, long after Christian authorities prohibited the formal mechanisms for transmitting Judaism and Islam, such as schools
and houses of worship, wives and mothers taught children prayers, enforced dietary
laws, and kept Judaic and Arabic culture alive in the home. For families who chose
or were forced to assimilate, women undertook the creation of Christian households,
replete with new foods, holidays, and daily routines. Womens domestic activities
provided the verifiable evidence of their families integration into Christian society
and, conversely, the failure to provide such evidence frequently served as the basis
for charges of heresy.
The impact of these studies of women and religion has extended well beyond
issues of sex and gender. Without a doubt, this research has forced scholars to rethink
their evaluations of the Catholic Reformation in Spain and the push for religious homogeneity. Individual womens willingness to pursue their own spiritual priorities
despite clerical prohibitions indicates significant weaknesses in the Churchs mechanisms for social control. Moreover, these studies reveal the continued or renewed
vigor of personal piety at a time when scholars had argued that Catholic Reform effectively suppressed even slightly suspicious spiritual activity. In the broadest terms,
the study of female piety has helped to reinvigorate Spanish religious, cultural, and
intellectual history.
The study of women and religion also led to a reconsideration of the meanings
of sex and gender in early modern Spain. The Catholic Reformation Church dedicated
much energy to redefining (or more clearly defining) gender expectations, and in the
process it reemphasized female chastity and submission as the key characteristics of a
good Christian woman. Yet, the degree to which those expectations permeated Spanish society has been called into question. If, as the research has indicated, religious
women frequently challenged male authority, then what were the gendered parameters that guided the lives of other Spanish women? For decades, the paradigm of the
Mediterranean honor code, in which women derived their honor from their sexual
chastity and men derived theirs from the protection of women in their care, was the
scholarly consensus. However, examinations of womens lives, especially through
Inquisitional documentation and legal sources, have revealed the flexibility of Spanish gender expectations. The prescriptive literature of the period has been relegated
to merely that prescriptions for not descriptions of early modern realities. At
least in terms of their sexual choices, Spaniards did not cower before the Church or
the Inquisition. Even at the height of the Catholic Reformation in Spain, non-marital
sex flourished. Prostitutes walked the streets, aristocrats had mistresses, adulterers
had secret rendezvous, and men had sex with men. As in all times and places, some
people got into trouble with ecclesiastical and secular authorities, while others flaunted
their relationships to the chagrin of those same powers.
Far from being constrained by any expectations about sexual honor, women,
particularly non-aristocratic women, and their families understood the malleability of
sexual norms. Despite both civil and ecclesiastical injunctions against such behavior,
non-aristocratic women engaged in sexual intercourse, sometimes as a guarantor of
the marriage promise and sometimes just for the fun of it. When their fiancs failed to
follow through with weddings or when the relationships did not work out, women sued
for monetary compensation for their lost virginities and for dowries that would allow

them to marry someone else. Neither public knowledge of premarital intercourse nor
the presence of illegitimate children seems to have impeded womens ability to marry.
This ability to move on to other relationships was, in part, due to the fact that women
and their communities defined female honor in other, nonsexual, ways, including hard
work, economic viability, and creditworthiness. While some aristocratic women may
have aspired to the purity described by Fray Luis de Len (1527-1591) and Juan Luis
Vives (1494-1540), it seems clear that most women (and men) followed the urgings of
their hearts and loins instead.

The instability of Spanish gender norms and of the relationship between sex
and gender played out dramatically in the cases of sex/gender transgressors like Catalina de Erauso and Eleno/Elena de Cspedes. Their stories are fascinating, and have
intrigued a generation of scholars. Working from a paradigm that asserted rigid gender
expectations, it seemed unfathomable that Catalina de Erauso could dress and pass as
a man, fight in the Americas, and then obtain a pension from Philip IV. However, now
we realize that both individuals and Church authorities were less resolved about such
issues than we had previously understood. Even in the halls of the Inquisition, there
was room for debate and negotiation about the nature of the female body and sexuality. Challenging the authority of the Inquisitors to define his/her sexuality, Eleno/a
carefully explicated the state and meaning of his/her genitalia and sexual activity. In
the end, he/she received a relatively light sentence and became quite a celebrity.

As has been true in other fields of European history, early modern Spanish
womens history has influenced the growing number of studies of male sexuality.3 Although this field is still in its infancy, it seems clear that definitions of masculinity were
every bit as pliable as those of femininity and the opportunities for and constraints on
male homosexual relations were just as varied as those for heterosexual sex. As was
true with female sexual activity, the community, rather than officials and their directives, often determined prosecutions for homosexuality. Even Inquisitors assessed
sodomy through the lens of social norms; homosexual sex was judged as more or less
serious depending on whether participants reinforced or challenged racial, religious,
and class hierarchies.
The most important contribution of these studies of sex and gender has been to
repopulate the streets of early modern Spain with women. The image of the secluded
Spanish woman whose public presence was limited to weekly visits to the church and
an occasional outing for some socially acceptable and well chaperoned event dominated
the literature for decades. Yet, the research on women clearly demonstrates that while
a few women may have opted for or been forced into chaste seclusion, they were in the
minority. Rather, and it seems almost ridiculous to say at this point, the public spaces of
early modern Spain were filled with women. Spanish womens legal rights were critical
to their visibility in early modern society. The fact that women, even married women,
could own property, transact business, work in a wide variety of occupations, and take
legal action meant that they were constant presences in nearly all public forums.
The work of social and family historians laid the foundation for this new vision of womens place in Spanish society. Their willingness to mine Spains notarial
records carefully has been particularly valuable to womens historians. Although it
can be tiresome work, Spains notarial archives are filled with wills, dowry contracts,
contracts, and legal settlements that involved women and that bring womens daily
lives and relationships to life.

Judith Bennett has recently described womens history as a sort of mother not a
single parent, but a co-parenting mother -- of gender history, the history of masculinities, and
the history of sexualities, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 19.

10

Through the study of womens wills, scholars have demonstrated that through
partible inheritance, most non-aristocratic women came into some real or moveable
property that was theirs alone, giving women some independence through the lifecycle. In parts of the country where late marriage was common, as in Galicia and the
Basque lands, access to property allowed single women to live independently until
they married (if they ever did). When they married, dowry contracts reveal the degree
to which womens families provided the bulk of the new couples property. Dowries
often included the house that the couple lived in, the bed they slept in, the animals
they raised, and the utensils they cooked with, a fact that no doubt gave wives some
increased authority in the relationship. Once married, although technically husbands
controlled their wives dowries, women did not necessarily relinquish all access to that
wealth. Not all husbands asserted their rights over their wives wealth and contracts
show married women using their own property and transacting business with the permission of (or sometimes in the absence of) their husbands. For widows, their access to
property from their natal families and from their marriages offered enough economic
security that few ever decided to remarry. In addition, across most of the peninsula,
womens ability to inherit and bequeath property allowed them to create and nourish
networks with family and friends, exert some authority within the household, and
pursue strategies for family advancement. In particular, wealthy women, like those
of the Mendoza family, clearly understood that their inheritance was essential to both
their own status and that of their children.
One of the most fruitful sources for the study of Spanish womens relationships
has been court records. Early modern Spanish women had a remarkable knowledge of
their legal rights and judicial processes and did not shy away from the public pursuit
of their rights and the defense of their persons. Indeed, the desire for justice seems to
have overcome many womens anxiety about airing their sexual encounters in public.
Women regularly sued for compensation for broken marriage promises, demanding not
only a dowry but support for any children that had resulted from the relationship. In
fact, far from embarrassing the woman and her family, the judicial process gave them
the opportunity to tell a new story about a love gone wrong. Women could take the
opportunity to turn the account of a long-standing consensual relationship into a tale
of seduction and betrayal or vice versa. Even those who seemed most vulnerable found
support in the judicial system. Widows used the courts to ensure the guardianship of
their children and protect their property from unscrupulous and greedy children and
relations, while female slaves willingly filed paternity suits against their masters.
These studies have yet to be as transformative as many of us would like. Beyond those of us specifically interested in gender, scholars have been slow to discard
antiquated notions of female chastity, timidity, and seclusion. For too long, assertions
of a rigid honor code provided a convenient opportunity to ignore the complications
of gender in many historical settings. In fact, outside of social history, many scholars
continue to skirt the complications that newer understandings of sex and gender in
early modern Spain might bring to their analyses. While it is true that not everyone is
interested in such issues as the focus of their inquiry, it is important for all scholars to
begin their investigations with an image of early modern Spain in which ideas about
sex and gender are in flux and women are present as either observers or participants
or both. This new baseline of analysis will, almost inevitably, alter the trajectory, if not
the outcome, of most historical study.
The field in which this lack of scholarly attention to issues of sex and gender
is most evident is political history. Scholars, preoccupied with the ongoing debates
over the construction of the Spanish empire, the extent of Habsburg absolutism, and
the seventeenth-century decline, have devoted little energy to the place of women.
However, those priorities have slowly begun to change, and recent research has begun

to complicate our interpretations of the Spanish monarchy and the ways that women
exerted authority in the political sphere.
The most extensive work has focused on the reign of Isabel I (r. 1474-1504), and
gendered analyses of her reign have changed the traditional vision of the Catholic Kings
and their consolidation of power. It is clear now that Isabel did not operate outside of
traditional gender expectations, although her femininity was often obscured in both
contemporary accounts and modern analyses. During the civil wars that brought her
to the throne, Isabel effectively avoided challenges to authority based on her gender,
in part because her main rival was also a woman. Even after she became queen, the
monarchys propaganda about her royal and personal partnership with Ferdinand
belied the complexity of their relationship and uniqueness of her reign. Over the
centuries, scholars followed suit, subsuming her femininity under the overtly masculine title of The Catholic Kings. However, by looking beyond this often genderless
rhetoric, womens historians have uncovered a very different Isabel. Rather than the
compliant partner in a dual monarchy, scholars now understand her as a much more
dominant and assertive ruler in her own right. Her ascent to power and her control of
Castile happened largely independent of her relationship with Ferdinand (1452-1516).
Moreover, despite her consolidation of power, neither her supporters nor her enemies
ignored her sex and she constantly battled the gender expectations of her time. After
her death, Ferdinand and son-in-law Philip the Fairs (1478-1506) attempts to discredit
Juana (1479-1555), the presumptive heir to the throne, also served to defeminize Isabel.
In order to assure Charless inheritance (as Charles I, r. 1516-1556), they carefully sidestepped the issue of Isabels gender while arguing that Juana, as a woman, was unfit
to rule. In fact, Ferdinand and Philips machinations to degender Isabel and prevent
Juana from taking the throne constituted not merely the Machiavellian manipulation
of political structures, but also the strategic employment of early modern gender expectations for their own political ends.
Isabel may have been the only early modern queen to rule in her own right,
but she was not the only woman to exert authority at court. However, we know far too
little about queen consorts and queens regent during the early modern period. In part,
this dearth of research is due to the fact that for over nearly two hundred years, Spain
was fortunate that only Queen Mariana of Austria (1634-1696), who ruled on behalf
of the young and invalid Charles II (r. 1665-1700), was called upon to accomplish the
transition from father to son. Yet, the use of female relations as proxy rulers was of
great importance during the reign of Charles I, who was not in the least reluctant to
leave his Spanish territories (or his possessions in the Low Countries for that matter)
in the hands of women. During the early years of his reign, he left his wife Isabel of
Portugal (1503-1539) as regent (along with Cardinal Tavera) on three different occasions: 1529-1532, 1535-37, and in 1539 until her death. In addition, his daughter
Juana (1535-1573) acted as regent for her brother Philip (who was himself regent for
his father at the time) when Philip went to England to marry Mary Tudor in 1554.
The seventeenth-century Habsburgs stayed close to home, but the Bourbon Philip V
revived the practice, leaving his young wife Maria Luisa of Savoy (1688-1714) as regent
soon after their wedding in order to tour his Italian territories. She proceeded first to
Zaragoza where she presided over the Cortes and then to Madrid where she attended
meetings of the Royal Council.
Scholars have devoted little energy to analyses of these women as political
actors. Rather, they have naively accepted the negative assessments of the men involved in those regencies, particularly in the case of Empress Isabel. Contemporaries
comments on her participation have not been contextualized in terms of the gender
expectations of the period. A gendered analysis of the discourse in the correspondence between Charles, Isabel, and others about the regency might help scholars get

11

beyond the discomfort of ministers with women in authority and move towards a
better appreciation of the experience of regency and female political authority. The
recent research on medieval queen consorts also provides some potential paradigms
for future investigations into the political activity of other royal women. Married to
Iberian kings in order to cement alliances and to bear royal children, these women did
not necessarily retire to the reclusive life of the palace nursery. Once they arrived at
court, they were much more extensively engaged in politics and exerted much more
political authority than we had previously understood. Through both formal mechanisms, like that of the queen lieutenant in Aragon, and informal influence, medieval
queens were more than just childbearers, they were often partners in politics, as
Theresa Earenfight has so intriguingly suggested.4 Could the same be said of their
early modern counterparts? Finally, significant work has been accomplished outside
of Spain on the issue of early modern regency, and that research might provide some
insight into how these women conceptualized their political experience and how those
around them understood their political activity.

Many royal relatives never held any official political authority, but exerted
political influence nonetheless. One of the most important contributions of womens
history is the expansion of what scholars interpret as political activity and political
spaces. Political debates, conflicts, and decisions took place not only at court, but also
in convents, in carriages, and in aristocratic salons and bedrooms. The relationships
between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, sisters and brothers, and lovers were
not free from political intrigue and influence. Research into those relationships could
provide insight into the exercise of political influence outside of council chambers and
bring women into the conversation about the formulation of monarchical policy.
Although sparse, the research on women in politics has provided a deeper
understanding of monarchical rule in Spain. As assertions of absolutism have given way
to a more decentralized definition of political authority, the monarchy has expanded
beyond the king and his ministers to include a wide variety of men and women. Many
of these women asserted their authority through formal mechanisms, while others
influenced policy from behind the scenes. Men were not always comfortable with
womens influence, but persistent factionalism meant that those same men were also
uncomfortable with the power exerted by their male opponents at court. Moreover,
women at court were not working outside of traditional gender norms, but within a
system that assumed that women with access to authority would employ it on behalf
of friends and relations just like their male counterparts.
Finally, in the past decade, scholars have made important inroads into study of
women in the eighteenth century. Until recently, literature scholars have much more
actively pursued work in this transitional century than historians, focusing on the
increased number of publications by women and the visibility of women like Josefa
Amar y Bourbn (1749-1833). However, the sources for studying women during this
period are abundant and even the small amount of research that has been completed
has not only provided both breadth and depth to more traditional histories of the
Enlightenment but has also changed our perspective on the topic. The conservative
nature of the Enlightenment in Spain looks less so when women enter the picture. Much
as in France, women were critical subjects and participants in the social, economic,
and political debates of the period. Female intellectuals eagerly joined the growing
number of economic societies and led tertulias in which they discussed issues including economic progress, citizenship, and the role of women.
In reading these works and talking with their authors, it is clear to me that
as study of this century expands, scholars will have to deal with a key dilemma in
12

See the preface to her collection of essays, Queenship and Political Power in Medieval
and Early Modern Spain (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005).

their work: should it be framed as the culmination of the early modern period or as
the beginning of the modern era? At this point, it is difficult to know the answer to
this question in part because we know so little about Spanish women during the nineteenth century. Although one answer is not necessarily more correct than the other, the
decision has important historiographic implications and is central to the debates over
periodization in womens history and in Spanish history as well.

These are only some of what I see as the most important contributions by scholars of women to early modern Spanish studies. However, as should be evident, there
are still many topics, particularly in political and economic history, that have received
little or no attention. As I mentioned above, there is much more to be learned about
the Habsburg women. We are lacking basic biographies of most Habsburg queens,
and most certainly we are lacking them from a feminist perspective. We know almost
nothing about womens political activity at the local level. There is also considerable
work to be done on urban and artisan women and commerce. In fact, in general we
know very little about womens economic participation at either the local, national,
or transnational level.
The study of women in science and medicine is a promising new field. Both
historians of medicine and philosophers have demonstrated interest in the scientific
texts of Oliva Sabuco (b.1562). In addition to clarifying the authorship of some key texts
which were long ascribed to her father, new translations of her work will, no doubt,
promote even more extensive study. Maternity, childbirth, and midwifery, topics central
to the study of women in other parts of Europe, have been seriously neglected in early
modern Spain. However, I am sure that ongoing research will yield some important
insights into some of the most common experiences of early modern women.
Social historians still have considerable work to do. We have only the vaguest
understanding of womens interactions across race/class/ethnic lines. Key moments
in the life cycle still require extensive investigation, including adolescence, schooling,
and aging. Certainly, cultural history, which has brought women so clearly into the
forefront in French and Italian history, needs much more work. A more complex conceptualization of gender in early modern Spain is also necessary. As we learn more
about the experiences of women, we also should learn more about the experience of
men as gendered beings and about the intersections of those experiences; however,
as Alice Kessler-Harris noted in a recent essay entitled Do We Still Need Womens
History,in the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 7, 2007), gender history addresses very different issues than womens history. It is not the successor to womens
history, and although these issues are also important, we should not have the sense of
having moved beyond the study of women.
The next wave of studies of early modern Spanish women will face some serious
challenges. As has always been true, the questions are difficult and the information is
hard to tease out of extant sources. Yet the payoff is great and it is clear that the study
of women has not only brought new information to our understanding of early modern
Spain, but also made it richer by complicating topics that had thought we thoroughly
understood. Most importantly, by bringing women into the forefront, womens history has raised new exciting new questions about the nature of early modern Spanish
society, culture, and politics.

I have attempted to collect an extensive and varied bibliography of historical
works that I hope will be useful for a wide range of teaching and scholarship. In addition to this selection of historical works, I have included some works by literature
scholars that I believe complement the historical studies. Of course, there are many
more excellent studies available than can be mentioned in the space of this article, and
more are appearing every day.

Select Bibliography

13

General Works

Works on Women
and Religion

14

Bel Bravo, Mara Antonia. Mujeres espaolas en la Historia Moderna. Madrid: Slez,

2002.
Garrido, Elisa, ed. Historia de las mujeres en Espaa. Madrid: Sntesis, 1997.
Morant, Isabel, coord. Historia de las mujeres en Espaa y Amrica Latina vol.2: El mundo
moderno. Madrid: Ediciones Ctedra, 2005.
Vigil, M., La vida de las mujeres en los siglos XVI y XVII. 2nd ed. Madrid: Siglo XXI,

1994.
Ahlgren, Gillian. Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1998.
Atienza Lpez, Angela. De beaterios a conventos: nuevas perspectivas sobre el mundo
de las beatas en la Espaa Moderna. Historia social 57 (2007): 145-168.
Bilinkoff, Jodi. The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
_______. A Spanish Prophetess and her Patrons: The Case of Mara de Santo Do
mingo. Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992): 21-34.
______. Related Lives: Confessors and their Female Penitents, 1450-1750. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2005.
Colahan, Clark. The Visions of Sor Mara de Agreda: Writing, Power and Knowledge. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1994.
Fink DeBacker, Stephanie, Constructing Convents in Sixteenth-Century Castile:
Toledan Widows and Patterns of Patronage. In Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe, edited by Allison Levy, 177-196. Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, 2003.
Giles, Mary E. ed. Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1999.
Guilhem, Claire. La inquisicin y la devaluacin del verbo feminine. In Inquisicin
espaola: poder poltico y control social, edited by Bartolom Bennassar, 171-207.
Barcelona: Crtica, 1981.
Haliczer, Stephen. Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of
Spain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Keitt, Andrew. Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain.http://brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=18&pid=24247
Leiden: Brill, 2005.
Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. Discipline, Vocation, and Patronage: Spanish Religious Women
in a Tridentine Microclimate. Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999): 1009-1030.
_______. Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister. Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, 2005.
Melammed, Rene Levine. Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of
Castile. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Monc Rebollo, Beatriz. Mujer y demonio: Una pareja barroca. Madrid: Instituto de Sociologa Aplicada, 1989.
_______. Demonio y mujeres: historia de una transgreson. In El Diablo en la Edad
Moderna, edited by Mara Tausiet and James S. Amelang, 187-210. Madrid:
Marcial Pons, 2004.
Morgado Garca, Arturo. Demonios, magos y brujas en la Espaa moderna. Cdiz: Universidad de Cdiz, 1999.
Muoz Fernndez, Angela. Mujer y experiencia religiosa en el marco de la santidad
medieval. Madrid: Asociacin Cultural Al-Mudayna, 1988.
_______. Beatas y santas neocastellanas: ambivalencia de la religion y polticas
correctoras del poder (ss. XIV-XVII). Madrid: Universidad Complutense/Consejera de Presidencia-Directin General de la Mujer, 1994.

_______ and Maria del Mar Graa eds. Religiosidad feminina: expectativas e realidades
(secs. VIII-XVIII). Madrid: Asociacin Cultural Al-Mudayna, 1991.
Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990.
_______. Behind the Veil: Moriscas and the Politics of Resistance and Survival. In
Spanish Women in the Golden Age: Images and Realities, edited by Magdalena S.
Snchez and Alain Saint-Sans, 37-53. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
_______. Moriscas and the Limits of Assimilation. In Christians, Muslims, and Jews
in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change, edited by
Mark Meyerson and Edward D. English, 274-289. Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2000.
_______. The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Poska, Allyson and Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt. Redefining Expectations: Women and the
Church in Early Modern Spain. In Gender and Religion in the Old and New
Worlds: A Transatlantic Perspective, edited by Susan E. Dinan and Debra A.
Meyers, 21-42. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Poutrin, Isabelle. Le voile et la plume: autobiographie et saintet fminine dans lEspagne
moderne. Madrid: Casa de Velzquez, 1995.
Puyol y Buil, Carlos. Inquisicin y poltica en el reinado de Felipe IV: Los procesos de Jernimo
de Villanueva y las monjas de San Plcido, 1628-1660. Madrid: CSIC, 1993.
Rhodes, Elizabeth. Luisa de Carvajals Counter-Reformation Journey to Selfhood

(1566-1614). Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 887-911.
Snchez Lora, Jos Luis. Mujeres, conventos y formas de la religiosidad barroca. Madrid:
FUE, 1988.
Snchez Ortega, Mara-Helena. Ese viejo diablo llamado amor: La magia amorosa en la
Espaa moderna. Madrid: UNED, 2004.
Sarrin Mora, Adelina. Sexualidad y Confesin: La solicitacin ante el Tribunal del Santo
Oficio (Siglos XVI-XIX). Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1994.
_______. Religiosidad de la mujer e inquisicion. Historia social 32 (1998): 97-116.
_______. Beatas y endemoniadas: Mujeres heterodoxas ante la Inquisicin, siglos XVI a XIX.
Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2003.
Schlau, Stacey. Following Saint Teresa: Early Modern Women and Religious

Authorityity. MLN 117, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (March, 2002): 286-309.
Slade, Carole. Saint Teresa of Avila: Author of a Heroic Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Surtz, Ronald. The Guitar of God: Gender, Power, and Authority in the Visionary World of
Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1990.
_______.Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: The Mothers of Saint
Teresa of Avila. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Tausiet, Mara. Ponzoa en los ojos: Brujera y supersticin en Aragn en el siglo XVI. Zaragoza: Ediciones Turner, 2000.
_______.Witchcraft as Metaphor: Infanticide and its Translations in Aragon in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. In Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative,
Ideology, and Meaning in Early Modern Culture, edited by Stuart Clark, 179-195.
New York: St. Martins Press, 2001.
Weber, Alison. Saint Teresa, Demonologist. In Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation
Spain, edited by Anne Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry, 171-195. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
_______. Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996.

15

_______. Spiritual Administration: Gender and Discernment in the Carmelite Reform.

Sixteenth Century Journal 31, special issue on Gender in Early Modern Europe
(Spring, 2000): 123-146.
Velasco, Sherry. Demons, Nausea, and Resistance in the Autobiography of Isabel de Jess,
1611-1682. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Villaseor-Black, Charlene. Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish
Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Edited and Translated
Texts by Women

Although the number of edited and translated texts is far too large to include in this
bibliography, I want to offer a few examples of what is available.
Aguado, A. M. et al., eds., Textos para la historia de las mujeres de Espaa. Madrid: Ctedra, 1994.
Arenal, Electa, Stacy Schlau, and Amanda Powell, eds. Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in
Their Own Words. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
Bartolom, Ana. Autobiography and Other Writings, edited and translated by Darcy
Donahue. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2008.
Francisca de los Apstoles. The Inquisition of Francisca: A Sixteenth-Century Visionary on
Trial, edited and translated by Gillian T. W. Ahlgren. The Other Voice in Early
Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Guevara, Mara de. Warnings to the Kings and Advice on Restoring Spain: A Bilingual Edition, edited and translated by Nieves Romero-Daz. The Other Voice in Early
Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Howe, Elizabeth Teresa. The Visionary Life of Madre Ana de San Agustn. Rochester, New
York: Tamesis, 2004.
Kaminsky, Amy Katz, ed. Water Lilies/Flores del agua: An Anthology of Spanish Women
Writers from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Mujica, Barbara. Women Writers of Early Modern Spain: Sophias Daughters. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2003.
Olivares, Julin and Elizabeth S. Boyce. Tras el espejo la musa escribe: Lrica femenina de
los Siglos de Oro. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1993.
Rhodes, Elizabeth, ed. and trans. This Tight Embrace: Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (15661614). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2000.
Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, Oliva. The True Medicine, introduction and annotated translation by Gianna Pomata. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Forthcoming
from University of Chicago Press.
_______. New Philosophy of Human Nature: Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great
Ancient Philosophers, which Will Improve Human Life and Health, translated by
Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintr, and C. Angel Zorita. UrbanaChampagne: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Salazar, Mara de San Jos. Book for the Hour of Recreation, edited and translated by
Alison Weber and Amanda Powell. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Soufas, Teresa Scott. Womens Acts: Plays by Golden Age Women. Lexington: University
of Kentucky, 1997.
Teresa of Avila. The Book of Her Life, translated with notes, by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD
and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD. Introduction by Jodi Bilinkoff. Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing, 2008.

16

Barahona, Renato. Sex Crimes, Honour, and the Law in Early Modern Spain: Vizcaya, 15281735. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Behrend-Martnez, Edward J. Unfit for Marriage: Impotent Spouses on Trial in the Basque
Region of Spain, 1650-1750. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007.
Berco, Christian. Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spains
Golden Age. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
Dopico Black, Georgina. Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early
Modern Spain. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Dyer, Abigail. Seduction by Promise of Marriage: Law, Sex, and Culture in SeventeenthCentury Spain. Sixteenth Century Journal 34 (2003): 439-455
Erauso, Catalina de. Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World,.
translated by Michele and Gabriel Stepto. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Kagan, Richard L. and Abigail Dyer, eds. Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews
and Other Heretics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Morant, Isabel. Discursos de la vida buena: Matrimonio, mujer y sexualidad en la literatura
Humanista. Madrid: Ctedra, 2002.
Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Magdalens and Jezebels in Counter-Reformation Spain, In
Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, edited by Anne J. Cruz and
Mary Elizabeth Perry, 124-144. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1992.
Poska, Allyson M. Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
_______. Elusive Virtue: Rethinking the Role of Female Chastity in Early Modern
Spain. Journal of Early Modern History 8:1-2 (2004): 135-146.
Snchez Ortega, Mara Helena. La mujer y la sexualidad en el antiguo rgimen: La perspectiva
inquisitorial. Madrid: Akal, 1992.
Taylor, Scott K. Women, Honor, and Violence in a Castilian Town, 1600-1650. Sixteenth
Century Journal 35 (2004): 1079-1097.
Tenorio Gmez, Pilar. Las madrileas de mil seiscientos: Imagen y realidad. Madrid: Horas
y Horas, 1993.
Vzquez Garca, Francisco y Andres Moreno Mengibar. Poder y prostitucin en Sevilla
(siglos XIV al XX). Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1998.
Velasco, Sherry. The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire, and Catalina de Erauso.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
_______. Male Delivery: Reproduction, Effeminacy, and Pregnant Men in Early Modern Spain.
Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006.
Vollendorf, Lisa. The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain. Nashville:
Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.
Bartolom Bartolom, Juan Manuel. Prcticas hereditarias y transmisin de la propiedad en Tierra de Campos leonesa: La comarca de Sahagn en el siglo XVIII.
Revista de Demografa Histrica 20: 1 (2002):179-212.
Blumenthal, Debra. Sclaves molt fortes, senyors invalts: Sex, Lies, and Paternity Suits
in Late Medieval Spain. In Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern
Spanish World, edited by Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera, 17-36. Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate 2003.
Coolidge, Grace E. A Vile and Abject Woman: Noble Mistresses, Legal Power, and
the Family in Early Modern Spain. Journal of Family History 32: 3 (2007): 195214.
_______.'Neither Dumb, Deaf, nor Destitute of Understanding:' Women as Guardians
in Early Modern Spain. Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005): 673-693.
Chacn Francisco, ed., Familia y sociedad en el Mediterrneo occidental (siglos xv-xix).
Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1987.

Sex, Gender, and Honor

Legal and Property Rights

17

Works on Women and Politics

18

Dubert Garca, Isidro. Historia de la familia en Galicia durante la poca moderna, 15501830: (estructura, modelos hereditarios y conflictividad). A Corua: Edicis do
Castro, 1992.
Garca Gonzlez, Francisco. Mujer, hogar y economa familiar: desigualdad y adaptacin en la sierra de Alcaraz a mediados del siglo XVIII. Hispania: Revista
espaola de historia 57: 195 (1997): 115-145.
Garca Nieto Paris, Mara Carmen, ed. Ordenamiento jurdico y realidad social de las
mujeres: siglos XVI a XX: actas de las IV Jornadas de Investigacin Interdisciplinaria. Madrid: Seminario de Estudios de la Mujer, Universidad Autnoma de
Madrid, 1986.
Oliveri Korta, Oihane. Mujer y herencia en el estamento hidalgo guipuzcoano durante el
antiguo rgimen (siglos XVI-XVIII). San Sebastin: Diputacin Foral de Gipuzkoa, 2001.
Ortega Lpez, Margarita. Protestas de las mujeres castellanas contra el orden patriarcal
privado durante el siglo XVIII. Cuadernos de historia moderna (special issue
entitled, "Sobre la mujer en el Antiguo Rgimen: de la cocina a los tribunales")
19 (1997): 65-90.
Peytavi Deixona, Joan. La famlia nord-catalana: matrimonis i patrimonis (segles XVI-XVIII).
Perpiny : Editorial Trabucaire, 1996.
Rey Castelao, Ofelia. Les femmes Seules du Nord-Ouest de lEspagne: trajectoires
fminines dans un territoire demigration 1700-1860.Annales de dmographie
historique 2 (2006): 105-134.
Rial Garca, Serrana M. Las mujeres en la economa urbana del antiguo rgimen: Santiago
durante el siglo XVIII. A Corua: Edicis do Castro, 1995.
Testn Nez, Isabel. Amor, sexo y matrimonio en Extremadura. Badajoz: Universitas,

1985.
Wessell, Dana. Family Interests? Womens Power: The Absence of Family in Dowry
Restitution Cases in Fifteenth-Century Valencia. Womens History Review 15
(2006): 511520.
Aram, Bethany. Juana the Mads Signature: The Problem of Invoking Royal Authority, 1505-1507.Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 331-358.
_______. Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2005.
Boruchoff, David. Isabel La Catlica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003.
Campbell, Jodi. Women and Factionalism in the Court of Charles II of Spain. In Spanish
Women in the Golden Age: Images and Realities, edited by Magdalena S. Snchez
and Alain Saint-Sans, 109-124. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Earenfight, Theresa, ed. Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern
Spain. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
_______. Without the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens, and the Idea of Monarchy
in Late Medieval Europe. Gender and History 19 (2007): 1-21
Kagan, Richard L. Lucrecias Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile.
Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 31-56.
Liss, Peggy K. Isabel the Queen: Life and Times. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2004.
Nader, Helen, ed. Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: Eight Women of the Mendoza
Family, 1450-1650. Urbana-Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Snchez, Magdalena S. The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the
Court of Philip III of Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Weissberger, Barbara F. Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Bolufer Peruga, Mnica. Actitudes y discursos sobre la maternidad en la Espaa del
siglo XVIII: La cuestin de la lactancia. Historia social 14 (1992): 3-24.
_______. Mujeres e ilustracin: la construccin de la feminidad en la Espaa del siglo XVIII.
Valencia: Diputaci de Valencia, 1998.
_______. Representaciones y prcticas de vida: las mujeres en Espaa a finales del
siglo XVIII. Cuadernos de Ilustracin y Romanticismo: Revista del Grupo de Estudios
del siglo XVIII 11(2003): 3-34.
Haidt, Rebecca. Embodying Enlightenment: Knowing the Body in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Literature and Culture. New York: St. Martins Press, 1998.
Lewis, Elizabeth Franklin. Women Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment: The Pursuit of
Happiness. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.
Sarasa, Carmen. Criados, nodrizas, y amos: El servicio domstico en la formacin del mercado
del trabajo madrileo, 1758-1868. Madrid: Siglo veintiuno, 1994.
Sherwood, Joan. Poverty in Eighteenth-Century Spain: The Women and Children of the
Inclusa. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.
Smith, Theresa Ann. The Emerging Female Citizen: Gender and Enlightenment in Spain.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Vicente, Marta. Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Atlantic
World 1700-1815. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
_______. Textual Uncertainties: The Legacy of Women Entrepreneurs in EighteenthCentury Barcelona. In Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish
World, edited by Marta V. Vicente and Luis R. Corteguera, 185-198. Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate, 2003.
_____________________
Does the Dos de Mayo Matter?1

This talk was given at the symposium: El Dos de Mayo: A Bicentenary (18082008) held at Kings College, University of London, on May 2, 2008. The opportunity
to come to London, and especially to Kings College, is always welcome, but this one
was particularly so, as it gave me the impetus to think about Spanish history, something
which my administrative duties have prevented me from doing for too long now.

No discussion of the Dos de Mayo, and especially of its memory, can ignore
Goyas great painting, a fragment of which appeared on the poster for the event. I
mention it now, not because it will have a large role in my talk, but because I will refer
to it in my conclusion.

When I began thinking about how to approach this talk, I expected that I
would be answering my question in the negative. I had even thought about starting
by describing the monument to the martyrs of the Dos de Mayo as a metaphor: located
on a main boulevard of the capital but effectively out of sight and forgotten except for
fleeting moments of official ceremony.

However, soon after I began my research, and especially after I began looking,
as we all do these days, on the web, I realized that I would have to change my line of
argument. The Dos de Mayo is very much alive in the mind of official Spain, if I may
characterize it that way, especially in this anniversary year, but I found something
much more important. The resonance of the Dos de Mayo is not limited to the official
commemorations. It is also present in a broader, political discourse that is independent
of that coming from government - and a challenge to it. It would seem, then, that two
hundred years after the events of May 2, 1808 the Dos de Mayo continues to matter.

The Eighteenth Century

Adrian Shubert
Associate Vice-President,
International
York University

19

20

At this point, I want to make one brief digression. The bicentenary of the
Dos de Mayo is not an isolated occasion. Today we are not simply marking the two
hundredth anniversary of an important event in Spains modern history. We are embarking on an ongoing series of anniversaries that will take us through 1825. More
importantly, these anniversaries will involve Latin America as much as they do Spain.
And these commemorations may not sit comfortably together. As Roberto Brea has
mentioned in a very recent article published in Ayer, while Spain commemorates a
stage of its history which leaves an indelible mark on its national identity from the
Latin American perspective, the commemorations essentially mark the birth of a group
of nations, that is, their independence from Spain If in the Spanish case, resistance
against the invader is the central part of the commemorations, what Americans will
be remembering is, basically, the resistance against the peninsular authorities of each
of the territories that formed part of the Spanish empire in America .2
Although the importance of the Dos de Mayo has had its ups and downs since
the Cortes of Cdiz declared it a national holiday in 1811 - in honour of the first martyrs
for the freedom of the nation and to excite the valour and patriotism of the nation to
imitate their heroism, patriotism and love of our legitimate sovereign and despite
the political tumult and changes of political regimes, it has remained a chronological
place of memory for two hundred years. This is quite a remarkable feat, one attributable in my view to the tremendous political versatility, or if you prefer ambiguity, of
the events of that day. Liberals and reactionaries both could adopt it, and each could
give it the political meaning they desired. Thus, in 1835, the city council of Madrid
invited people to commemorate their love and loyalty for their legitimate sovereign."
The following year, guests were called on to commemorate those martyred for their
love of liberty and national independence.3
Christian Dmange has detailed the vaivenes of the Dos de Mayo, both as trope
in literature and the arts and as an institutionalized holiday. He sees the Dos de Mayo
as the great foundation myth of the modern nation, a status it owed to the contribution of the arts and letters as well as to the state. 4 The events of May 2 were recalled,
celebrated, and interpreted in numerous poems, most of which appeared in the press.
Dmange has counted a total of 274 between 1839 and 1887, an average of almost six
per year. The frequency with which such poetry appeared varied with the prevailing
political climate. 1839 to 1843 was a key moment, and 1862-1872 represented what
Dmange calls the golden age.5 The period of Moderado rule after 1843 and then
the Restoration were moments of relative decline. In general, progresistas, republicans
and democrats adopted the Dos de Mayo as a symbol, while more conservative groups
were much less keen on it.
This literary myth tended to become a liberal one. This began early, with
Cristbal de Beas Memorial del Dos de Mayo, published in 1811, which portrayed the
people not only as protagonist, but also as a protagonist motivated by la libertad.
This poem also made no reference at all to the king. That said, the literary myth was
never uniform, especially at the beginning. Some early poems focused on military
figures, especially Daoiz and Velarde - - rather than on the pueblo, and leant themselves
to a conservative and Catholic interpretation of the event. 6

The clear identification of the Dos de Mayo with liberalism came during the
Carlist War, and after 1839 it became a standard reference for all branches of liberalism, although with differing emphases. Esproncedas Hymn to the Dos de Mayo,
published in the newspaper El Labriego in 1840, was the foundation stone of an approach that resonated with the left, one that exalted the pueblo and libertad above all.
It begins: Oh! Es el pueblo! Es el pueblo!
This was also the period in which the Dos de Mayo was conflated with the
War of Independence, which was itself an a posteriori invention, as Jos Alvarez Junco

has demonstrated.7 Of course, identifying the Dos de Mayo with the struggle against
Napoleon, who came to figure more prominently in this literature, made agreement
easier. Fighting Napoleon meant not having to go into a detailed analysis of the events
and made it possible to hide what could be inconvenient and to channel political patriotism towards nationalism and xenophobia.8
By the mid-nineteenth century, there was something of a consensus, best embodied in Bernardo Lpez Garcas poem, Dos de Mayo, which was published in
El Pueblo in 1862, and which was subsequently memorized by generations of Spanish
school children.
Lpez Garcas poem exalted the valour of ordinary Spaniards in defending
their country against the foreign invader, but presented Spaniards as being motivated
solely by patriotism and the defence of the homeland. More political motivations were
absent.
Siempre en lucha desigual
cantan tu invicta arrogancia,
Sagunto, Cdiz, Numancia,
Zaragoza y San Marcial.
En tu suelo virginal
no arraigan extraos fueros;
porque, indmitos y fieros,
saben hacer sus vasallos
frenos para sus caballos
con los cetros extranjeros..
Mrtires de la lealtad,
que del honor al arrullo
fuisteis de la patria orgullo
y honra de la humanidad,
en la tumba descansad!
que el valiente pueblo ibero
jura con rostro altanero
que, hasta que Espaa sucumba,
no pisar vuestra tumba
la planta del extranjero!9
In discussing this poem, Alvarez Junco has remarked that, in contrast to Marianne or Britannia, the figure it invokes is that of a grieving mother who wanders
among smoking ruins and black-draped flags, driven to despair by the death of her
sons a transposition of the traditional Mater dolorosa of the Catholic imaginary.10

The Dos de Mayo was also represented in the theatre, itself a politically sensitive and much controlled medium.11 Dmange has identified 18 plays about the event
written over the course of the 19th century. Five of them appeared during the Sexenio
Revolucionario alone, and in these plays there was a balance between the military
heroes and the leading role of the pueblo: a perfect conjunction of the patriotic myth
of the Dos de Mayo and social and political realities.12

In theatre, as in poetry, writers lost interest in the Dos de Mayo after the
Restoration. The emerging progressive movements of the labour left, socialism and
anarchism, had their own times and places of memory. May 1 in the Haymarket in
Chicago proved to be more evocative and resonant than the Puerta del Sol, its geographic remoteness from Spain notwithstanding. 13 As the nineteenth century ended,
the potent political symbol of the Dos de Mayo had been reduced to the light popular
entertainment of the zarzuela.

The Dos de Mayo was also represented in the visual arts, and from an early
moment. The estampas which began to circulate almost immediately after the event

21

played a fundamental role in codifying the episode and in the construction of its
memory. They represent the people as the unquestioned actors and heroes of the
day.14 Then, according to Dmange, there was a long lacuna. The event disappeared
from Spanish painting from 1835 to 1862, only to emerge again, albeit in a small way,
among the paintings entered into the Exposicin Nacional de Bellas Artes after 1856.
The importance attached to history paintings by the organizers is evident from the
prize money awarded for the various categories: the winning history entry received
90,000 reales, compared to 35,000 for religious paintings and 17,000 for landscapes.15
Of the 625 paintings which appeared in the history category, 52 dealt with the War of
Independence, but only 8 took the Dos de Mayo as their subject. The siege of Zaragoza
drew a larger number. In addition, these paintings privileged the actions of the soldiers in the Parque de Artillera, and portrayed the pueblo as willing sacrifices rather
than as the agents of liberal revolution.16 Overall, paintings on modern topics were
dwarfed by the numbers devoted to medieval and ancient ones.17

Myth there was, but it is important not to exaggerate its strength, especially as
far as public commemoration of the day is concerned. The Dos de Mayo was the ideal
raw material for a public holiday; Alvarez Junco remarks that it would be difficult
to imagine a better start to the process of modern nationalization [of the people],18
but governments, including liberal ones, did little to realize its potential. The Cortes
of Cadiz ordered that a monument be built, but it was completed only thirty years
later. The celebrations themselves were left up to the city of Madrid, and the day came
to have little resonance outside the capital. Although John Hay said that May 2 was
the only purely civic ceremony I ever saw in Spain, the official celebration always
included a strong religious component, including mass at the church of San Isidro. By
the 1850s, there was not much enthusiasm, even in the capital. According to Emilio
Tamarit, author of Memria histrica del da Dos de mayo en Madrid, published in 1852,
lately there had been a decline in the attendance of those who were invited and.. the
crowds in the streets through which the parade passes in the Prado are less numerous.
Twenty years later, Louis Teste said the celebration seemed more like a funeral.19
Xenophobia, and particularly anti-French sentiments, had long been a standard part of the Dos de Mayo, at least among the lower classes. Anselmo Lorenzo, a
prominent early anarchist, recalled that:
in the years before the September Revolution [of 1868], May 2 was a
horrible day for poor foreigners. Foreign workers who didnt know
any better would go confidently into the popular quarters to beg,
only to have to retreat in the face of the insults or stones thrown by
the children who, egged on by the men, thought it a meritorious act
of patriotism to humiliate the franchutes, which is what they called
all foreigners, among whom they were unable to distinguish because
of their ignorance.

22

Yet, according to Louis Teste, the situation was very different only a few years later:
May 2 is no longer the pretext for committing violence against Frenchmen I have
walked calmly through the Prado, speaking my language, without having been bothered in the slightest.20

The decline of the Dos de Mayo continued under the Restoration, except for
a fleeting revival for the centennial in 1908. As it began its second century, it was not
even clear that the Dos de Mayo remained a national holiday. Prime Minister Antonio
Maura tried to eliminate the civic procession and the religious service, but opposition
from the press and some civilian organizations led to their continuation, although in a
much lower key. The national government showed less interest than ever, and some-

times not even all government offices closed for the day. Other than the city council of
Madrid, only the army continued to show much interest, so that during World War I
and especially the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the commemorations took on a markedly military character.

The potential provided by the Dos de Mayo, and the War of Independence as
a whole, was also far from realized in the field of history writing, and especially the
writing of textbooks for schools. As Carolyn Boyd has shown, The Spanish liberal
state deviated from the European pattern by failing to convert instruction in national
history into an effective instrument of political socialization and national integration.
The amount of time given to national history in the curriculum was very short: it was
absent in elementary school and received only one year at high school, which relatively
few people attended anyway. And when Spanish history was studied, the course rarely
got into the nineteenth century, and when it did, the period was reduced to a terse
chronicle of wars, invasions, revolts, conspiracies, pronunciamientos and revolvingdoor ministries. 21

The lethargy, or perhaps inconsistency, of political authorities in nurturing such
symbols of nationalism stands in contrast to the energy and enthusiasm with which the
symbolic representation of the countrys religious identity was promoted - and not just
by the Church. This was part and parcel of the larger struggle to define Spains identity
which lasted until the end of the Franco regime. These efforts were most intense in the
first two decades of the twentieth century, coinciding with, if not caused by, the spread
of class conflict, an upsurge in anticlericalism, and the breakdown of the turno system
of the Restoration. To commemorate the centenary of the War of Independence, Alfonso
XIII bestowed the rank of Captain General on the Virgin of the Pillar - Zaragoza ahead
of Madrid again. In 1917, the king also declared a new national holiday: October 12.
This was the day Columbus "discovered" America, but the date was also associated
with an appearance of the Virgin and the holiday was known generally known as the
Day of the Virgin of the Pillar or the Day of the Race.
Without doubt, the greatest demonstration of the plasticity of the Dos de Mayo
came during the Civil War, when both sides used it. First, two examples from the Republican side, Solidaridad Obrera, the anarchist paper, saw the struggle against fascist
imperialism as a replay of the epic struggle for national independence against French
troops who thought they owned the peninsula. For its part, the Communist paper
Mundo Obrero, spoke of the heroic genius of Daoiz and Velarde, of Lieutenant Ruiz,
of Malasaa, [which] is embodied by the soldiers in the trenches of Madrid. Castaos,
El Empecinado, los defensores de Zaragoza and Gerona are the forerunners of our
military leaders of today. Its the same cause.22
The Franco regime also adopted the Dos de Mayo, declaring it a national
holiday in 1938. Locked in a titanic struggle against the Communist International,
was it really that much of a stretch to invoke the memory of those Spaniards who
fought against the Napoleonic international, or to use Goyas painting in one of its
propaganda posters? The difference between 1808 and 1936 was that while the sacrifice of first fascists, those first fallen, only served for the enemy to invade us again
in 1812 through the parliamentary system, the Constitution, masonry and romantic
poetry, this time the enemy would be defeated. For the regime, and particularly for
the Falange which was given charge of the Dos de Mayo celebrations, praise for the
Dos de Mayo is praise for the eighteenth of July, because the circumstances resemble
each other, because there are sad similarities, because the military and popular spirit
is the same.23
Francoists could draw on an old tradition. At the time, the Despertador Cristiano-Poltico denounced Napoleons troops as the tool of the coalition of the impious,
the incredulous, Deists, atheists, heretics, and apostates from France and all Europe
whose revolutionary goal was to destroy Throne and Altar.24

23

24

The Franco regime was not committed to the Dos de Mayo, as it was not committed to much except to its own survival. After World War II, when the prominence
of the Falange became an inconvenience, so too did the Dos de Mayo, which Franco
had left in the hands of the single party. It was combined, first with the religious Fiesta
de las Cruces and then with the Maravillas district celebrations of San Isidro. By the
late 1950s, the Dos de Mayo had been turned into folklore, and when the 150th anniversary of the day came around, not a single Minister could be bothered to attend the
ceremony. 25

Today, as we commemorate the bicentenary of the events of May 2, 1808,
things could not be more different. Last December, the Zapatero government created a
National Commission for the Celebration of the Bicentenary of the War of Independence to oversee, in the words of Vice-President Mara Teresa Fernndez de la Vega, an
ambitious program of political, cultural and other types of initiatives and activities.
According to the Minister of Culture, Csar Antonio Moilna, the list of activities would
include more than ten exhibitions, eight international conferences and colloquia,
concerts, publications, plays, didactic activities across the country. 26

Which Dos de Mayo is Spain remembering now? Not the revolutionary one
of the nineteenth century left, but one not far removed from it. Todays Dos de Mayo
celebrates a democratic, progressive Spain that is once again playing an important role
in Europe: plural open and tolerant Spain, committed to peace and human rights
This is the tradition that we want to celebrate from today on, the tradition of the values and ideals of liberty, equality and justice that took root in Spain then and which,
in spite of the efforts of some to silence them, to hide them and to uproot them, have
come down to us and have made us the advanced democracy we are today.27

Interestingly for a day which historically was an outlet for xenophobia and
especially Francophobia - todays Dos de Mayo is also the occasion to celebrate Spains
relations with France. On the one hand, the French showed great support for those
Spaniards who opposed Franco; on the other, in a very contemporary touch, France
and Spain are fighting together, in the words of Vice-President Fernndez de la Vega,
against those who continue to have recourse to violence to impose repression. The
two countries, united by powerful bonds of liberty, will tie the hands and feet of terrorism until it disappears from our lives forever. 28
This recalls, albeit in a much more serious vein, the celebration of the two
hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, in which the navies participating in
the mock battle were designated by colours, blue versus red, rather than by nation.

We should not be surprised that in the Spain of the autonomies there is not
just one official set of celebrations this year, nor that Madrid should also be commemorating the Dos de May. Last August, the government of the Comunidad of Madrid
established its own organism, the Fundacin Dos de Mayo: Nacin y Libertad, for this
purpose. Nor should we be surprised that a creation of the Partido Popular government would place nation before liberty. The announcement of the Foundations
creation in the Boletn Oficial de la Comunidad de Madrid talked about the importance
of the Dos de Mayo in igniting the resistance against Napoleon, but had little to say
about its contemporary relevance other than that the liberals who came to govern
Spain created the modern concept of citizenship and tied the nation to liberty the
union of the nation and freedom which we have inherited with the Constitution of
1978.29
Like its national counterpart, the Madrid Foundation is undertaking a number of activities, including four exhibitions, plays, movies, concerts, dance shows and
zarzuelas. It is also running an essay competition for school children: Essays must be
about the Dos de Mayo, but beyond that the choice of topic is open Suggested
topics include people, historic events, the monarchy, Madrid at the time. Oddly, (or
is it with a fine sense of irony?) first prize is a trip to Paris.30


The most ambitious component of the Foundations work, and the most original,
has been to commission, along with Telemadrid, Academy Award-winning director Jos
Luis Garc to make a movie about the Dos de Mayo. Titled Independence, loosely
based on two of the Episodios Nacionales by Benito Prez Galds and made, according
to the director, without any historical rigor, the film has a budget of 15 million euros
and is expected to debut on television in September. 31
The Dos de Mayo has demonstrated both great staying power and extreme
flexibility as a lieu de mmoire. The former, I believe, is a direct result of the latter. Given
Spains tumultuous political history since 1808, it is astonishing that it has survived,
albeit with varying levels of vitality, for two hundred years.

The democratic and progressive Spain of today is reading the Dos de Mayo
in a key of liberal democracy, civil rights and the struggle against violence. And one
hopes that this reading and the relatively successful Spain we know will both continue.
Any such hope must immediately recognize two caveats. The first is that we cannot
know what the future will bring, either in terms of Spanish politics or how the Dos
de Mayo will be read and used, especially in a time of new challenges such as mass
immigration and the so-called Clash of Civilizations and Global War on Terror.

The second is that the Dos de Mayo, like any place of memory, cannot be
subjected to a single, unanimously shared reading. Against the official reading, there
will always be alternative - and dissenting - ones. And with the availability of the
internet and the emergence of the blogosphere, the expression and dissemination of
these alternatives is easier than ever.

Let me provide three examples, which I found in a quick web search. On July
27 last year, the blog Uranio Enriquecido posted El Espritu del Dos de Mayo, a
violent diatribe against President Zapatero, which is worth quoting at length:
This anniversary bears a powerful symbolism, as it coincides with an
election period which has the potential to bring serious change after
the anomalous parenthesis of Zapatero. If 200 years ago Spain entered
the modern world, in 2008 it can regain its sanity after the shock of
the ominous legislature.
Note the parallelisms:
Now as then we have a problem of enlightened despotism (of illiterate
despotism in Zapateros case); now as then the national identity of
Spain is at risk (the doceanistas laid the foundations of a structure which
the Undesirable is taking apart to feed to the nationalist termites);
now as then the independence of civil society is undermined by state
interventionism, which invades such sacred spaces as education and
ideas with the same arrogance as the Frog soldiers
And now as then it is necessary to get rid of the uncultured one who
is taking us to our ruin.
Of course, without the Napoleonic invasion Spain would not have
progressed. And Zapatero now, like Joe Bottles in 1808, has proven to
be the unwilling homeopathic treatment that can make the organism
react. With his combination of irresponsible thirst for power the parttimer (penene) from Leon has left in evidence the contradictions and
lacunae of the Transition.32

25

The second example is a website: Liberacin, El Espritu del Dos de Mayo,

which takes both Zapatero and nationalisms as its targets and invokes the Dos de
Mayo as a rallying cry against them.
The Spanish people rose up against French domination on May 2, 1808.
The War of Independence was the key element in the crystallization of
Spanish nationalism. In 1812 the first Spanish constitution, La Pepa,
was proclaimed. Today we are confronted with an internal enemy
which is gaining strength: [regional] nationalisms. The spirit of May
2, a spirit to recover As on May 2, only taking to the barricades
can return our liberty.33

I stumbled across the final example while looking for the text of Lpez Garcas
Ode to the Dos de Mayo. I found it in a number of places, including one page
entitled Blog de la Falange de Avila y de la Sierra de Madrid. The author felt that
even though the poem, with its nineteenth-century rhetoric, would sound truculent
and out of date, it should be remembered today, in this grey Spain of ZP, wrapped
in mediocrity and the struggles between right and left, this Spain so far removed
from any thought of national rebellion against tyranny.34 Unfortunately for future
historians, these sources will prove to be even more ephemeral than the chapbooks
(pliegos de cordel) or what Alcal Galiano called the bad verses sung by the plebs of
Madrid which circulated in the early part of the nineteenth century. 35

I have not yet seen one, but it would not surprise me that somewhere in
cyberspace is a web page or a blog posting in which someone is calling on Spaniards
to resist the tsunami of Islamic immigration and doing so using Goyas great painting
of the Dos de Mayo en Madrid, which, after all, also bears the title The Charge of
the Mamelukes.
_______________
1. I want to thank Dr. Gregorio Alonso and his colleagues in the Department of
Spanish and Spanish American Studies for doing me the honour of inviting me to participate
in this international colloquium on the Dos de Mayo.

2. Roberto Brea, Las conmemoraciones de los bicentenarios y el liberalismo
hispnico, Ayer, 2008, pp. 194-5.

3. Adrian Shubert, A Social History of Modern Spain (London: Unwin Hyman, 1991),
pp. 203-4.

4. Christian Dmange, El Dos de Mayo: Mito y fiesta nacional (1808-1958), (Madrid:
Marcial Pons, 2004), p. 8.

5. Ibid., p. 24

6. Ibid., pp.39-42

7. Jos Alvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa: La idea de Espaa en el siglo XIX (Madrid: 2001),
pp. 119-28.

8. Dmange, Dos de Mayo, p. 57.

9. Bernardo Lpez Garca, Oda al Dos de Mayo, http://www.eroj.org/
angulo/2Mayo/Odaal2demayo.htm. In 1904, King Alfonso XIII inaugurated a monument to
Lpez Garca in his home town of Jan.

10. Alvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa, p. 568.

26


11. For the political power of the theatre, and the efforts to control it, see Adrian
Shubert, Spain, in R.J. Goldstein, ed., The Battle for the Public Mind: Censorship in 19th-Century
Europe (New York: Praeger, 2000).

12. Dmange, Dos de Mayo, p. 92.

13. Jean Louis Guerea, "Del anti-Dos de Mayo al Primero de Mayo. Aspectos del
internacionalismo en el movimiento obrero espalol," Estudios de Historia Social, 3-4 (1986): 91104.

14. Dmange, Dos de Mayo, p. 105.

15. Alavrez Junco, Mater dolorosa, p.251.

16. Dmange, Dos de mayo, p. 119.

17. Alvarez Junco, Mater dolorosa, p. 295, fn 83.

18. Alvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa, p. 128.

19. Shubert, Social History, p. 204.

20. Cited in Guerea, Del anti Dos de Mayo, pp. 94-5,100.

21. Carolyn Boyd, Historia Patria (Princeton: 1997), pp. 74-87.

22. Cited in Alvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa, p. 146.

23. Demange, Dos de Mayo, pp. 272-3. In 1939, Ernesto Gimnez Caballero published
a book entitled Triunfo del 2 de mayo.

24. Cited in Alvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa, p. 123.

25. Ibid., pp. 276-7.

26. Both statements are available at www.mcu.es/cooperacion/MC/Bicentenario/
index.html

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. BOCM, 4 September, 2007, p. 2, http://www.fundaciondosdemayo.es/media/
docs/Decreto%20120-20072.pdf

30. www.fundaciondosdemayo.es

31. www.elmundo.es/papel/2007/10/11/madrid/2228969.html, http://www.
hoycinema.com/actualidad/noticias/Jose-Luis-Garci-rueda-mayo-por-encargo-ComunidadMadrid.htm

32. http://blogs.periodistadigital.com/uranio.php/2007/07/27/el-espiritu-del-dosde-mayo

33. http://www.2demayo2m.blogspot.com/. Emphasis added

34. http://www.espacioblog.com/falangesierrayavila/post/2007/05/02/oda-aldos-mayo-bernardo-lopez-garcia-1-838-1-870
35. Cited in Demange, Dos de Mayo, p. 27.

27

Cynthia Ann Gonzales

Charlotte Wells,
Indiana University, Ph.D. 1995
Professor of History, University
of Northern Iowa

28

A Collection of Memories: Our Mentor Helen Nader

In the summer of 2006, Professor Helen Nader retired from her position as a
professor in the department of history at the University of Arizona. Helens career has
been distinguished by over thirty years of teaching, during which time she developed
popular courses on the Black Death and Spanish Inquisition and directed fourteen
Ph.D. students primarily in Spanish but also Italian and French history. In addition,
Helen published numerous works, including the highly praised Liberty in Absolutist
Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns 1516-1700 (1990) and Power and Gender in Renaissance
Spain: Eight Women of the Mendoza Family, 1450-1650 (2003), and she has received various honors such as the 2006 biannual Bodo Nischan Award for Scholarship, Civility,
and Service from the Society for Reformation Research. Helens contributions to the
field of Spanish history are numerous and invaluable. In addition to her professional
accomplishments, Helens extreme generosity with regard to her scholarly insights,
time, and intellectual and emotional support is considered to be one of her greatest
contributions by those of us who have had the privilege to train under Helen. Recently,
many of Helens doctoral students from Indiana University and the University of
Arizona honored her, their mentor, at the 2007 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference
with the presentation of a number of panels organized on her behalf. Throughout
the conference, Helens students fondly recalled their years as a Nader student, and
everyone agreed that they were fortunate to have had Helen as their main advisor.

I didnt go to Indiana University in the fall of 1987 intending to work with
Helen Nader; it was a lucky chance. Id looked to pursue medieval history under the
guidance of Barbara Hannawalt, but she had departed. I was left with my declared
minor in early modern Europe, and a tall, dark woman who looked as though she
must have stepped off a Byzantine icon. One seminar with Helen, and medieval history slid to the back of my mind!

I arrived in Bloomington as the battle-scarred veteran of an earlier unhappy
attempt at Ph.D. study. Helen seemed to have examined my earlier professors methods
and decided to do just the opposite. She made no attempt to force students interests
into the mold of her own research pursuits. Rather, she encouraged us to make our
own discoveries and shared our excitement when we did. I vividly remember the
interest with which she replied to my question about how the French government
could be naturalizing people and calling them citoyen in the sixteenth century if,
as shed told us in seminar, no one in Europe at that time had any notion of citizenship beyond the strictly local level. I dont know, Charlotte, she said. Why dont
you find out? Finding that answer shaped my dissertation and still really directs
my research into the various ways French thinkers envisioned nation and nationality
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Note well that my question was, and my
research is, about France, not Spain. Its a wise and versatile mentor who can direct
a students research in an area relatively far from her own primary focus!

One other practical and important piece of advice came from Helens work
on The American Historical Review. She had learned as an editor what she passed on
to her students: It does not have to be perfect; it just has to be done! Its a maxim I
still repeat to my colleagues, my students, and myself. Do the work, and get it done
without bogging down in the details. A complete work can always be revised, but an
incomplete work, be it ever so perfect, is really good for nothing at all.

Just as Helen showed me what a nurturing and supportive professor could
do for her students, she also modeled collegiality and friendship with other scholars,
particularly other women. A cordial community drew together women professors and

graduate students in the Bloomington history department, and Helen was its instigator
and heart. To create such a professional community of my own remains a goal.

Thank you for that, Helen. Enjoy many happy active years of retirement with
your family and friends!

I am grateful that my brother, who began graduate school a few years before I
did, gave me the good advice that I now pass along to nearly every prospective graduate
student I meet: Pay a lot of attention to the professor who will be your main advisor
because he or she will likely make or break your experience in graduate school. Im
glad that I listened to him. It wasnt just his advice that I was heeding, though. Even
at the time, I was struck by how many people from faculty at other institutions to
graduate students at Indiana University told me to jump at the chance to study with
Helen Nader. So many people couldnt be wrong, I thought. Thus, notwithstanding
my hesitation to move back to a college town, I began graduate school at Indiana
University. I was not alone. Kristy Williams, Tim Schmitz, Kimberly Williams, Grace
Coolidge, Belton Myers, and I all came to Indiana within a year or two of one another
and for the same reason: to study under Helen. We were following in the footsteps of
Liz Lehfeldt, Charlotte Wells, Christine Petto, and others. It is no exaggeration to say
that we quickly became the envy of other graduate students at IU. While we have
taken a variety of different paths since then, as have the students who later trained at
the University of Arizona, I am confident that all of us are grateful for Helens guidance, patience, insights, advice, and friendship.

Helen was simply a model advisor in every respect, from a seminar teacher to
a dissertation director. Behind the scenes, Helen also advocated our causes and helped
us get support. (Even when she went to Arizona, she negotiated to remain our dissertation director and flew back to the Midwest for each of our defenses.) As a faculty
member myself now, I often marvel at how genuinely welcoming Helen always was
whenever I just stopped by her office to chat. I appreciated her openness then. Now I
wonder just how she managed to be that accessible, while also accomplishing so many
other things. I half wish that I could take back some of those afternoons that I robbed
from Helen without even realizing I was doing so; but I am also half-glad that I can not
and that I did not have the good manners to bother Helen less. More than just being
welcoming, she was (and remains) a model person as well as an educator and scholar.
She was always willing to talk about or read whatever we were working on, to discuss
our teaching assistantships, summer plans, and even our personal lives. Helen took
our ideas seriously; she listened so intently and without interruption, that I was at
first uncomfortable not being used to being given such careful attention. She often
volunteered new ideas and directions to think about, but most of all she encouraged
us to think boldly. One particular piece of advice that we all must remember (since
we came to quote it back to one another) was: Its fine to fill gaps, but its better to
shift paradigms.

Encouraging us to take on big issues and challenges while respecting the
work of other scholars and the scholarly enterprise itself, is another way that Helen
has mentored us. Her view of the world and the scholarly life is broad and generous,
a place where many ideas and people are welcome. Rather than fostering competitiveness, she encouraged the collective and supportive aspects of scholarship among
her students. She never let us linger long in pointless anxiety about the future (her
statement My students get jobs when they graduate was remarkably reassuring) nor
despair of our own abilities. She taught us that documents were the heart of history,
but that we should also trust our instincts and fine-tune our thinking through our
writing. One of my favorite lines from Helen was something that she told me when I
wasnt getting much writing done on my dissertation: I think that you are afraid of

Valentina Tikoff
Indiana University, Ph.D. 2000
Assistant Professor of History,
DePaul University

29

my expectations, that it wont be good enough. So let me lower those expectations.

Just write. Write what youve got. Some of the sentences should have verbs. This
comment shows not only Helens good humor, but also her empathy, her humanity,
and her knowledge of what it took to get a student writing. And it worked.

While it would be easy to go on about specific courses, conversations, or
experiences that made a strong impact on each of us, one thing that should be said is
that Helen was and is a mentor in perhaps the most important way: from early on,
she made us all feel welcome in the profession. When we were still students taking
classes, she took us to conferences where she introduced us as young colleagues, arranged for us to meet and talk with scholars who came to campus, and made us aware
of countless opportunities that we otherwise would have missed. In an extraordinary
act of generosity, she took six of us to Spain for several weeks in the summer of 1994
on a pre-dissertation trip. That trip not only got us to Spain and the archives, but also
taught us research skills and equally invaluable lessons in settling disputes with hostalproprietors. Several weeks into that trip, while we were in Granada, Helen received
word that her mother had taken a turn for the worse. Nonetheless, she insisted on
treating us all to a lovely dinner at the Parador near the Alhambra on her last evening
in Spain. Notwithstanding the somber circumstances, it was a wonderful dinner, not
only because of the delicious food and beautiful setting, but because we all knew that
Helen had given us not only a trip that we would remember, but also the tools and
confidence to complete the trip and continue our research projects.

I am very grateful indeed to have had the opportunity of training under Helen
Nader. And I am equally grateful that she remains as gracious and welcoming to me
now, and as generous with her time, advice, and comments, as when I stopped by her
office as a student. Quite simply, I owe my career to Helen and strive to follow her
model of an inspirational and compassionate scholar, educator, and individual.
Aurelio Espinosa,
Univ. of Arizona, Ph.D. 2003
Assistant Professor of Religious
Studies, Arizona State Univ.

30

It was sometime around late January or early February 2002 when I had just
returned from the AHA, and I was in a bad place. Job interviewing had been a brutal
experience and the cause of many disheartening feelings. I had been writing a lot and
teaching courses that Helen had developed. She provided me with a great opportunity
to build my teaching credentials by taking charge of her Age of Discovery, The
Black Death, and Spanish Inquisition courses. Yet, I did not feel positive about my
future. Suffering from writers block while working on my dissertation, I didnt
want to write anymore and felt like packing it all up. I considered non-academic jobs,
diplomacy, and a position with the State Department or the American Embassy in Madrid so that I could get out in the real world where there was no research involved. I
felt that all of the time I had spent researching in the archives had been a waste of my
time and all of my efforts to make sense of the data had been fruitless. My research
lacked any creative element; I had no thesis and no point to make. Everything else was
interesting and my own project was boring. What I was reading in the book review
sections of our journals was far more important and exciting than what I was doing.
I assessed that my project had been doomed from the start.

I knew that Helen was able to put together thousands of jigsaw pieces and
make a universe and give it meaning. I, however, had no confidence in my own
ability to put together something meaningful, even with the help of so many designs
provided to me by Helen. Finally, I called Helen and told her that I wanted to quit,
ABD. Helen is never overbearing primarily because she has no authoritarian gene
in her makeup; yet, she is able to provide leadership, supervision, and the tools for
healthy and constructive self-assessment. During this period of several weeks, Helen
invited me over to her house numerous times, and she took me out for lunch and coffee
regularly. She was nursing my soul and relieving anxieties overwhelming my mind
that, in retrospect, had endured the overflow of the melancholic humor. Everything

was in front of me and I did not like what I saw: the prospect of no job, an unfinished
dissertation, and a teaching load that revealed to me the burdens and responsibilities
of the reality of a tenure-track job, which I felt was not only an impossible goal but
also a vocation that I was not cut out to fulfill. Helen encouraged me to enjoy life and
suggested that I take a time out, a couple of weeks of doing activities that were not connected to my work. After my vacation, Helen provided a couple of suggestions.

Now I know that her appreciation of mystery novels is due to her great ability
to figure things out. Helen has inspired me not only through her scholarship, but it
was also through her womanity, especially during this bleak period when I was her
graduate student, that she demonstrated the kind of historian, teacher, and friend that
I want to be.

When I first came to the University of Arizona to begin the doctoral program
in history, I naively had no idea who Helen Nader was except that she specialized in
the history of Spain, which is what I wanted to study, and that she was willing to take
me on as one of her students. At the time, I was simply content with the fact that I had
the opportunity to continue with my graduate study. As time progressed, however,
I realized just how fortunate I was to have been given the opportunity to study with
and come to know such a remarkable scholar and accomplished individual. Many
times, fellow graduate students have conveyed to me their desire to work with Professor Nader and how lucky I am to have her as my advisor, and many times I have
honestly replied, Yes, I know. Im very lucky. Here are a few of the many reasons I
am so lucky.

I am fortunate because Helen is exactly the kind of mentor that I needed in
order to successfully get through my doctoral program. She is always patient, attentive,
supportive, and extremely generous with her time, insights, and advice. I am fortunate
because Helen has the ability to bring out the best in her students after providing them
with a strong foundation of knowledge and skills with which to pursue their research
and scholarly endeavors. I am fortunate because she understands how difficult writing a dissertation can be and exactly what it takes to survive the process, even if that
means taking a short break from it all. More than anything, I am fortunate because
Helen never stopped believing in me, even when others questioned my abilities as a
historian.

I have many fond memories from my time as Helens student between 2000 and
2008. I remember the day she invited me to join her during her summer trip to Spain
and subsequently my first visit to a Spanish archive where Helen introduced me to the
archivist and guided me through the process of finding, requesting, and reading an
actual document. I recall how understanding she was when I told her that I wanted to
take some time off from my research and writing in order to pursue other professional
interests and how she casually suggested that I return to the University of Arizona
as soon as I finished with my other pursuits. I remember how excited Helen would
be every time I turned in a chapter from my dissertation, even when I was reluctant
to hand it over. And I will remember our weekly meetings at the Espresso Art caf in
Tucson where we would discuss my dissertation and any new discoveries while she
cheerfully sipped a caf mocha with whipped cream. During these meetings, Helen
would patiently help me talk through the rough ideas and insights that eventually
came to form the chapters of my dissertation. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and I
always left the caf feeling confident and excited about my work. It is all these little
things that she did, and so much more, that made Helen such a wonderful advisor.

Helen will always be my mentor and my professor, as I refer to her often,
but through the years she also became my friend and family. I am proud to have
been one of her many graduate students her last student before she retired from the
University of Arizona. For me, it truly was and continues to be an honor.

Cynthia Ann Gonzales,

Univ. of Arizona, Ph.D. 2008

31


Garca Herrero, Mara del Carmen. Del nacer y el vivir: Fragmentos para una historia de la vida
en la baja Edad Media. Zaragoza:
Institucin Fernando el Catlico,
2005. 422pp. Reviewed by
Marta V. Vicente, University of
Kansas.

Prez, Joseph. History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews

from Spain. Translated from
the Spanish by Lysa Hochroth.
Introduction by Helen Nader.
Urbana and Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 2007. xv+149
pages. Reviewed by Bethany
Aram, Seville, Spain.
32

BOOK REVIEWS

In Del nacer y el vivir: Fragmentos para una historia de la vida en la baja Edad Media
Mara del Carmen Garca Herrero has compiled a stimulating collection of her essays
that narrate life in medieval Iberia from the perspective of women and their bodies.
The texts focus on life in the Crown of Aragon, mostly in Zaragoza and Huesca, and
are drawn from documents in Zaragozas notarial, municipal, and parish archives,
as well as from Inquisition files and documents from the citys diocesan archive. The
book, consisting of fifteen chapters is divided into three sections: I, Sobre el parto y
la crianza; II, Amor, matrimonio y otros modos de regular la convivencia; and III,
Violencia y mediacin. Four chapters include full transcriptions of the main document used for that chapters case study. In particular, in chapter 12Una burla y un
prodigio: El proceso contra la Morellana (Zaragoza, 1462), a case-study of a woman
who murdered her hostessthe article itself is only nine pages long, while the transcription of the document is twenty-six pages. The interest of this particular chapter
is in the transcription of this fascinating case study, a criminal process housed in the
municipal archive of Zaragoza.

The main contribution of this collection lies, first, in making accessible to a
wider audience articles that the author has mostly published in local journals or hardto-get conference proceedings. Second, this collection recovers stories drawn from
local history that describe the complexity and difficulties of daily life in late medieval
Zaragoza. Garca Herreros transcriptions of four of the most interesting cases will
be of particular interest to scholars of medieval history, women, gender, and sexuality studies. The topics covered in the book range from the practice of midwifery, the
education of children, abortion, infertility, bigamy, murder, and female erudition; all
of them bring us closer to the drama of life and death in medieval Zaragoza. There are
dying mothers worried about the future of their newborn children, and parents without
biological children who created surrogate families. Overall, Garca Herrero depicts
a world characterized by the fragility of the nuclear family vulnerable to death, the
arduous life of illegitimate children, the difficulties of abortions, the emotional burden
of infertility, the perils of bigamy and murder. A real jewel in this book is chapter 4,
Matrimonio y libertad, which studies a series of love stories between partners of
unequal social backgrounds, such as the case of Antonio de Arino and Gracia Prez.
The couple had secretly contracted marriage against her parents consent, and despite
her familys pressure, Gracia had her marriage recognized and validated by the church.
In this and many other chapters the reader begs for more, since most of the documents
are so rich one wishes the author had provided further analysis to help us better locate
the collections case studies within a larger context, going outside Aragon to compare
them with the rest of Spain. Nevertheless the book is interesting for the rich archival
material that the author has put together.
_______________

This concise history, published in Spanish in 1993, reinterprets the causes as
well as the consequences of the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from the realms of Queen
Isabel and King Ferdinand. Synthesizing multi-volume works unavailable in English,
it rejects idealized claims about the nature of medieval convivencia, or peaceful coexistence among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Rather than three cultures, Prez sees
two dominant cultures, Muslim and Christian, in which Jews participated depending on where and when they lived. According to Prez, Jews were tolerated only in
times of economic expansion and political stability, which began to break down in the
fourteenth century. Prez also challenges the idea that Jews constituted a financial and
business elite or bourgeoisie whose expulsion devastated the economy, arguing that
Jews and Christians exercised the same trades and professions before 1492.


Drawing upon the work of Yitzhak Baer and Luis Surez Fernndez, Prez
begins with a succinct and sensible account of the Jewish experience in medieval Spain.
While discussing the status of Jews under Visigoth, Islamic, and Catholic rule, Prez
consistently distinguishes between prominent individuals and the majority of the Jewish population. While highlighting the achievements of Jewish intellectuals in Crdoba
and Toledo, Prez cautions against idealizing a golden age of Spanish Judaism. He
describes the rise of Christian intolerance in the thirteenth century, which culminated
in the fourteenth-century crisis, analyzed in Chapter 2. Prez identifies the origins of
the myth of the Jewish usurer as debtors inability (or unwillingness) to repay sums
owed to Jews, noting later that Jewish moneylenders sometimes served as figureheads
for ecclesiastical institutions in the same business. In Castile the civil war and victory
of Enrique Trastmara over Pedro I further devastated the Jewish communities.

Beginning with the killings of 1391, Chapter 3 discusses mounting pressures on
Jews to convert to Catholicism, including the legislation of 1412 in Castile and 1414 in
Aragon. The social and economic success of many converts inspired resentment among
Old Christians, which surfaced in Toledo in the riots and purity of blood statute of
1449 and in propaganda spread by the enemies of Enrique IV. Chapter 4 details how
doubts about the sincerity of converts to Catholicism led Queen Isabel to decree the
strict separation of Jews from Catholics, to appoint the first inquisitors in 1480, and in
an immediate precedent to the decision of 1492 -- to expel all Jews from the dioceses of
Seville, Cdiz, and Crdoba in 1483. Chapter 5, which discusses the measures of 1492,
analyzes three versions of the edict, including one prepared by the inquisitor general,
Toms de Torquemada, also translated as appendices. Convincingly, Prez demonstrates
the Inquisitions leading role in the expulsion. As for the economy, Prez argues, the
expulsion produced a temporary crisis rather than the onset of Spains decline.

This book makes an important case against Spanish exceptionalism. If Isabel
and Ferdinand were some of the last Western European sovereigns to tolerate Jews in
their realms, their decision foreshadowed subsequent attempts to forge political unity
through religious unity, as in Louis XIVs revocation of the Edict of Nantes, thus ending toleration for Protestants in France. In the context of this interesting argument,
however, notions of nation, nationalism, and the European community appear
anachronistic.

As a translation of the Spanish original published in 1993, this book does not
incorporate the recent related work of scholars including Yom Tov Assis, Mara Gloria
de Antonio Rubio, Haim Beinart, Enrique Cantera Montenegro, Juan Carrasco, Elka
Klein, Mark D. Meyerson, Isabel Montes Romero-Camacho, David Nirenberg (mentioned in Helen Naders Introduction), Miguel ngel Ladero Quesada, Batrice Leroy,
and Luis Rubio Garca.
_______________

The University of Chicago Press, after a hiatus of fifteen years, has reissued
in paperback George Zuckers translation of Paloma Daz-Mas essential overview of
the history, language, and literatures of the Sephardic Diaspora. There have been other
panoramic histories of the Sephardim, such as Esther Benbassa, and Aron Rodrigues
Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th-20th Centuries (2000),
and Jane Gerbers The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (1992). What
most sets this work apart is that Daz-Mas is a philologist who gives equal time to
socio-historical topics on one hand, and literary-linguistic topics on the other. To wit,
she divides her work into sections on Historical Background (33 pages), History of
the Sephardim (35 pages), Language (38 pages), Literature (48 pages), The Sephardim
and Spain (26 pages), and The Sephardim Today (28 pages). As befits her training and
appointment as Professor of Spanish Literature at the Universidad del Pas Vasco, she

Daz-Mas, Paloma. Sephardim:

The Jews from Spain. Ed. and trans.
George K. Zucker. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press,
2007. xiv + 231pp. Reviewed
by David A. Wacks, University
of Oregon.

33

34

is particularly strong on the linguistic and literary issues and includes very interesting and detailed sections, for example, on what she refers to as the Adopted Genres
of modern Sephardic literary practice, namely journalism (132-36), narrative (136-39),
theater (136-145), and autograph poetry (145-48). This section, in addition to a fascinating aside in the section dedicated to the Second Diaspora of Sephardim in North
America (62-66), brings to light, among other facts, the existence of an active Ladino
press in New York City during the early twentieth century.

The chapter on The Sephardim and Spain, original to the 1992 English
translation, is particularly commendable in its assessment of the ways in which Sephardim and their relationship with Spain have been imagined by Spaniards. Daz-Mas
keeps a safe critical distance from her material, even holding herself accountable for
romanticizing the Sephardim in her own creative writing (168-69).

Zuckers translation is respectful of Daz-Mas original text, while accessible
to non-hispanophones and non-specialists alike. He has made sound decisions in
adopting a notional rather than hyperliteral translation, and especially in reproducing
the original text of Ladino sources accompanied by his English translations, to let the
Sephardim speak in their own voice (viii). This is particularly beneficial for readers
who remember enough high school Spanish to appreciate the original language but
for whom the Spanish edition would not be accessible.

There are a few areas where Zucker might have improved his interpretation of
Daz-Mas work. Despite his useful Translators Additional Bibliography consisting
of English language texts on Sephardic topics, neither he nor Daz-Mas has updated
the bibliography since the 1992 hardcover edition of Zuckers translation. In the last
fifteen years, a good deal of work has been published in all of the areas covered by
Daz-Mas, and it seems a disservice to readers both general and specialized to have
let this detail slip. In addition, there are a number of typographical errors and faulty
transliterations from Hebrew or from Spanish phonetics to English. He refers to the
prominent thirteenth-century Catalan Rabbi Nahmanides by the incorrect acronymic
Rambam (5) (Mamonides was the Rambam, Nahmanides the Ramban). The transliteration of the Aramaic betrothal ceremony in the section on Marriage (5) contains
several errors, and we later learn of the Romance Bible of a Rabbi Moshe Arragel of
Guadalara (102) (Guadalajara). However, these and other such errors are on the balance cosmetic and do not detract substantially from the books appeal. In any event
they are probably more telling of editorial policy than of the scholarship of either
Daz-Mas or Zucker.

Perhaps the strongest recommendation I can give this book is that it got me
excited to learn (and teach) more about some of the overlooked areas of Sephardic
language and literature. With the exception of the runaway popularity of the Sephardic
ballad and song tradition, historical studies have tended to dominate the field both
in the academy and among the general readership. Like Daz-Mas and Zucker, I am
a professor of Spanish with an interest in Sephardic studies. And while there exists a
great deal of Sephardic literature, from rabbinic musar (ethical) treatises to journalism
and modern novels, almost none has been edited in a Romanized, glossed format accessible to students of Spanish literature. This book not only brings together a wealth
of bibliography and cultural information delivered in an effective and engaging narrative, it underscored the need to make these materials available for a larger audience
of students of Hispanic culture. While the great majority of you are historians who
may not think of Sephardic culture in these terms, the current rise of Spanish in the
United States and increasing interest in Jewish culture in the mainstream has created
the perfect storm for Sephardic studies in North America. And Daz-Mas and Zuckers
book is an excellent tool for exploiting this interest and parlaying it into productive
academic and public discussion. _______________

James Caseys Family and Community in Early Modern Spain is a richly detailed
dissection of an urban and provincial elite in early modern Spain. Despite the books
broad title, Casey does not engage the topic of the family across social classes. What
he loses in breadth, however, is more than compensated by the depth of his treatment
of the values, mores and behaviors of his true topicthose families that constituted
Granadas ruling class through the early modern era. From an impressively broad range
of sources ranging from civil court records to creative literature to family annals and
much more, Casey constructs an image of a local social and political order undergirded
by what he argues were the remarkably resilient core values of honor and lineage.

Through the course of twelve thematic chapters, Casey spins off of this central
thesis a wide array of challenging and thoughtful arguments. His consideration of
marriage strategies and inheritance patterns, for instance, leads him to conclude that
Granadas elite in the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century city was neither a
hermetically sealed oligarchy nor an entirely open group that provided easy access to
upwardly mobile individuals and clans. Instead, Caseys nuanced examination offers
us the metaphor of a circulating eliteone in which the apparently new families
that accessed local political offices throughout the early modern era were most often
intermarried, junior branches of formerly powerful lineages whose senior cousin lines
had either fallen on hard times or died off without an heir. Within this system, Casey
contends, clan reckoning and the memorialization of ancestry exerted an overwhelming
cultural force that consciously and subconsciously shaped the identities and choices
of those individuals involved in it. The resulting overlapped ties and relations among
these circulating lineages, moreover, generated a culture that valued moderation
over excess, stability over change, clan over individual, and tradition over innovation.
To Casey, Granadas dynamic frontier society of the decades following the citys
1492 Christian conquest had thus given way to a society that, although not entirely
static, was increasingly rigid and largely resistant to outside influences or change
in the century and a half that followed the suppression of the Second Rebellion of the
Alpujarras (1568-1571).

Casey arrives at these conclusions via research that is unapologetically qualitative and descriptive rather than statistical or data-driven. He masterfully displays his
deep familiarity with the citys early modern history and its powerful families without
cluttering the text with charts and numbers (although eight genealogical tables included
as an appendix are helpful). Yet even in the midst of a book that so skillfully weaves
dozens of strands of narrative and anecdotal evidence into an apparently seamless
whole, many scholarly readers may find themselves wondering if in the midst of all the
talk of honor, resistance to change, and the narrowness of local life, there may lurk
lingering ghosts of longstanding Anglophone stereotypes about early modern Spain
enumerated so effectively in recent works by Richard Kagan among many others.
Of course, to say that this book seems to reinforce so many of these traditional
stereotypes does not by itself imply that the stereotypes have no basis in the historical
record. Caseys study may in fact reinvigorate debate about precisely these issues. This
is especially true given that this study has appeared on the heels of Ruth MacKays
equally challenging 2006 book Lazy, Improvident People:Myth and Reality in the Writing of Spanish Historya work that explicitly attempts to dispel the traditional AngloAmerican stereotypes (above all the supposed obsession with honor) that this study
posits as core values in early modern Granada. Faculty who teach graduate seminars on
early modern Spanish history should note that reading MacKays recent book alongside
Caseys might make for fascinating debate as well as encourage fresh inquiry.

_______________

Casey, James. Family and Community in Early Modern Spain: The

Citizens of Granada, 15701739.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 314 pp. + xi.
Reviewed by David Coleman,
Eastern Kentucky University.

35

Berco, Cristian. Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy,

and Society in Spains Golden Age.
Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2007. 248 pp. Reviewed
by Harry Vlez Quiones, University of Puget Sound.

36

The study of early modern homoeroticism in Spain has come a long way since
its beginnings in the 1980s. Mary Elizabeth Perrys volume Crime and Society in Early
Modern Seville (1980) and Rafael Carrascos Inquisicin y represin sexual en Valencia:
Historia de los sodomitas (1565-1785) (1985) readily come to mind. It is of the latter that
one is reminded as one reads Cristian Bercos Sexual Hierarchies. Analyzing documents that Carrasco had previously worked with, namely the sodomy trials carried
out by the Aragonese Inquisition, Berco proposes a new reading that gives preference
to homosocial bonds, social class, and age over questions of gender construction and
sexual identity. Despite specific instances of intolerances, single bursts of repression,
male homosexual behavior formed part of the encompassing structure of masculine
identity and sociability (39), Berco asserts. Thus, he posits that the so-called nefarious
sin, universally considered as crimen inter christianos non nominandum, was but
an integral part of the male sexual mindset, a potential erotic encounter present at the
core of male sociability (39). In this fashion, readers are invited to consider a radically
different view of the social and sexual landscape of Golden Age masculinity. In it, what
we have theorized as sexual minorities disappear and their sexual behaviors, traits,
and habits become part and parcel of what being male in early modern Spain was all
about. As Berco sees it: Under a framework of gender and age hierarchies, a patina
of homosexual behaviour subtly covered the architecture of male sociability (40).

Sexual Hierarchies is divided into six short chapters. The first three explore the
dynamics of male-on-male sodomy, its breadth, and its subversive potential. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 concentrate on the way the Aragonese Inquisition operated in cases of
sodomy and examine issues such as its relation to local authorities, the social context
of cases, and the limits of social control.

[T]he staleness of the identity debate (131) appears to be one of the driving
forces behind Bercos monograph. And yet, Berco admits the possibility that a subculture structured along the axis of same-sex desire may have existed in early modern
Spain as he ponders in the books conclusion: Are some of the Spanish mollies we
have encountered pointing to a primitive gay urban culture, a space where drag foremothers slowly established a niche of difference marked by sexual preference? (133)
However, Berco suggests that we dismiss their significance, as he goes on to state: This
is certainly arguable, but I wonder about the ultimate relevance of asserting such a
point, except for moving the chronology of gayness back to the early modern era, and
thus destabilizing what everybody knows is an overtly rigid paradigm regarding the
emergence of a gay identity in the nineteenth century (133). As mentioned earlier,
for Berco this would be futile since it would merely advance the agenda of one side
of a fruitless contest between scholars of gayness and deconstructionists, what he
terms a debate between the deaf and the mute, with two camps with differing epistemological assumptions about evidence, history, and identity battling it out (133).

The principal problem with Bercos otherwise attractive volume is what appears to be a limited interpretation and understanding of how homoerotic desire is
embodied in and performed by individuals. Following a heteronormative position
that blindly and absolutely equates penetration with a masculine act perpetrated upon
a feminine or feminized other, he appears to give full credence to a strategic deformation in the interpretation of sodomy nearly as common now as it appears to have been
then. Such a paradigm of sexuality had evolved from Greek and Roman models. In
these, males would always retain the prerogatives of their gender and their status as
long as they were the insertive partner in any sexual encounter. In addition, sexual
desire for boys and teens had its place in the construction of masculinity.
Following that logic, being the insertive partner and openly claiming that position as ones exclusive role in sodomitic encounters could lead to lesser punishment in
as much as it could be equated with being the less perverted of two sodomites. Since

anal sex between males was seen by inquisitors, moralists, law makers, and others as
a degraded imitation of coition, the absolute standard of penetrative sexuality, he who
would take the lesser or passive position in such a scheme, that is, he who would consent
to being used as a woman, would generally be judged more harshly, especially if he
was an older man or the older partner. It is this way of viewing the crime of sodomy
that engenders the sexual subject positions of bugarrn or bugre and puto or marin.
Sodomy, however, was both a grave sin and a crime. It should be evident that those
accused of it would devise rhetorical and cultural strategies to avoid being detected,
accused, and penalized as a sodomite. Indeed, the testimony of those processed by
the Aragonese Inquisition supports this. Claims of being solely involved in insertive
anal sex with other males have to be read against the very way in which the crime of
sodomy was prosecuted. Tops and bottoms were sodomites and knew that they could
be held as such by others. The fact they could be punished differently on account of
whether they were the insertive partner or the passive one was complicated further
by questions of class, race, religion, and age. Yet, as I remember hearing during my
school days in that late medieval island that is Puerto Rico: La ley de Herodes: Tan
maricn es el que da como el que coge. Much like tango, it takes two to engage in
pecado nefando.

In the concluding pages of Sexual Hierarchies Berco asks, Why should we make
identity the defining issue in the history of sexuality? (133). The work of scholars
such as Dan Heiple, Matthew Stroud, Robert Ter Horst, Sherry Velasco, Baltasar Fra
Molinero, Mara Mercedes Carrin, Sidney Donnell, and Jos Cartagena Caldern
could help answer that question from several perspectives, but it appears to be absent
from the bibliography of this monograph. Had Berco, for instance, considered Heiples
research, he would have had to consider the advice Father Ledesma gave confessors
concerning sodomites in his Primera parte de la Summa en la qual se cifra y summa todo
lo que toca y pertenece a los sacramentos (Salamanca, 1608). For Ledesma, it was imperative that confessors distinguish between at least two types of sodomites, one of which
he refers to as ocultos y secretos and those others he labels pblicos y notorios.
These two different categories of sinners required that the confessor employ different strategies in order to be able to administer penance. That early modern sodomy
was a variegated tapestry in which many sexual practices, different performances of
masculinity, and assorted levels of personal and cultural awareness coalesced is what
Ledesma knew and what Berco dismisses, preferring instead to focus on the study
of homosocial bonds centered on the presumed supremacy of the all encompassing
system of penetrative sexuality (32). Berco would have us believe the question of a
homosexual identity dissolves within the aspects that characterized the more common
dynamics and masculinity (32).
Having chosen to approach the stories, testimonies, and other evidence of
sodomites, their accusers, and the inquisitors who oversaw the process through the
lens of heteronormativity, what Berco reports is significantly different than what Carrasco and others had earlier shared with us. In Bercos monograph the early modern
queer disappears or else is confined to a reduced space sparsely populated by the odd
molly-like being and his fairy drag foremother. His contribution to the history of sexuality in Sexual Hierarchies does away with the crisis of masculinity that Sidney Donnell
and others have painstakingly studied in favor of chronicling one more chapter in the
endless saga of penetrative sexuality.

The reasons why so many scholars have fore-grounded questions of identity
to such an extent in their studies on early modern sexuality ought not to be relegated
to a rhetorical vacuum. As the work of many colleagues has shown, the pervasive
silence that surrounds the mental structures of heteronormative thought is every bit as
damaging as the one that deafened and twisted the plural voices whose traces survive

37

MacCormack, Sabine. On the

Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas,
Spain, and Peru. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xix
+ 320 pp. 19 illustrations. Reviewed by Daniel Stolzenberg,
University of California, Davis.

38

in inquisitorial documents and other literary and non-literary texts in the early modern
period.
Despite its critical bent and the notable absences in its bibliography, Sexual
Hierarchies is destined to be a controversial and hotly discussed volume. Bercos
placement of homoeroticism at the center of early modern Spanish masculinity is a
polemical but fruitful move. As recent sexual scandals involving lawmakers from
Florida, Idaho, Washington State, and the Balearic Islands have shown, cultural strategies that allow self-identifying heterosexual members of a community to engage in
homosexual acts while desperately clinging to the privileges of heteronormativity still
abound. Moreover, Bercos monograph makes available to English readers a wealth
of information previously available only in Spanish. In conclusion, Sexual Hierarchies
makes a significant contribution to a debate that can only lead to a deeper understanding of gender, masculinity, and queerness in early modern Spain.
_______________

In Cuzcothe former capital of the Inca empire, refounded as a Spanish colony
by Francisco Pizarro in 1534, and today a regional capital in southern Perufrescos in
the vestibule of an old house depict Julius Caesar and Pompey charging one another
on horseback, spears raised. Painted in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century,
the images offer vivid testimony of the penetration of classical motifs into the Andes in
the century following Spanish conquest. They are reproduced in Sabine MacCormacks
On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru, which explores the influence of
classical knowledge on historical understanding in and about Peru and the Andes in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consisting of MacCormacks readings of early
modern texts by authors of Spanish and Amerindian origin, the book is organized
into thematic chapters dealing with subjects such as the pre-Hispanic past, war and
political life, the founding of cities, and the civilizing power of language.

Its cumulative portrait of the classical tradition holds the book together as
multifarious and open-ended, offering no particular ideology, but rather serving as an
adaptable set of conceptual tools for thinking about history and culture. In this respect
it fits in with recent work by European intellectual historians who have described
Renaissance classical studies in similar terms. Readers familiar with this scholarship
will learn much of interest about early modern histories of South America but are
unlikely to have many cherished assumptions challenged. MacCormacks target lies
elsewhere. In opposition to scholars of colonial Latin America such as Tzvetan Todorov
and Walter Mignolo, who have described the use of classical and European models in
the interpretation of Amerindian culture as the silencing of indigenous voices, MacCormack demonstrates the heterogeneity, ambiguity, and flexibility of the classical
texts that played such a prominent role in the works of early modern writers on the
Andes.
The plasticity of the classical tradition as a resource for understanding New
World phenomena was, first, a function of the diversity of examples offered by Latin
and Greek literature. Different lessons were to be found, for example, in the histories
of the civil wars of the late Republic than in Tacituss chronicle of imperial decadence.
Both the Spanish and the Incas were subject to Roman comparisons, and often enough
the former were found wanting while the latter measured up. One of MacCormacks
most interesting claims is that Europeans encounter with the classical past equipped
them with a deepened understanding of cultural difference, which they brought to the
study of the Andes. For all their cozy familiarity with the classical world, humanistically trained scholars knew that the ancient civilizations they so admired had been
radically different from their own. Not least, ancient history taught them that pagans
were capable of good governance and virtuous action, a lesson that was not lost on
historians of the Inca such as Garcilaso de la Vega. MacCormack does not deny that in

many cases classical models led to the simplification and misunderstanding of Andean
phenomena, but she shows that such models could also generate more complex and
accurate portraits. In many instancesfor example, the study of Quechua by Europeans trained in Latin grammaran initial phase of crude parallels is seen to lay the
groundwork for subsequent deeper understanding of local particularities.
On the Wings of Time is not tightly argued, as perhaps befits a book whose
central claim is one of indeterminacy. While one learns much from MacCormacks
erudite textual analyses, the book is weakened by its lack of sustained argumentation.
In particular, a provocative and intriguing claim given prominence in the introduction,
that the classical tradition constituted a significant and integral part of early modern
Andean culture, does not receive systematic substantiation in the chapters that follow.
This reviewer is sympathetic to MacCormacks assertion that the classical tradition
came to belong to the indigenous people of the Andes, and thus, to claim that those
who thought and wrote about such matters were silencing the indigenous people of
Peru and of other Andean countries amounts to denying those people part of their
own historical experience (xviii). But this claim raises a series of questions about the
extent, variation among social groups, and change over time of knowledge of classical
culture in Spanish Peru that MacCormacks anecdotal examples from texts by indigenous authors cannot begin to answer. Nonetheless, what the book does, it does well.
It makes a compelling case for studying early modern European and Latin American
cultural history together, and (like the authors earlier Religion in the Andes) shows
how much a scholar with profound knowledge of classical literature can contribute
to historical understanding of the colonial American experience.
_______________
Jodi Campbells study of kingship on the Madrid stage is a work of theater
history that allows the plays to be the centerpiece, an unusual choice that is amply
justified. Campbell argues that the repertoire of seventeenth-century Spanish comedias
engaged in a public dialogue about the virtues of kingship. The plays reveal that,
counter to the propagandist image created by the kings court, public audiences saw
and read plays that presented a decidedly critical view of the monarchy.

Campbell begins with an engaging portrait of the context of playwriting, production, and reception in seventeenth-century Madrid. She convincingly argues that
a good proportion of the audiences in the corrales were drawn from the middle and
lower ranks of society and that playwrights were catering to their tastes. The plays
thus performed and later published (the form in which she has access to this repertoire)
reflected a market audience rather than the concerns of the kings court. Far from being
an extension of court propaganda, Madrids public theaters were considered highly
immoral by some members of the court; royal officials lost interest in trying to regulate
the corrales once the comedia genre was gradually marginalized by court machine plays
after 1650.

Campbells analysis of the repertoirea selection of twenty-six plays by Pedro
Caldern de la Barca, Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, Juan de Matos Fragoso, and Juan
Bautista Diamante that present kings as central characterssupports this reading of
the corrales as a public space somewhat autonomous from the court. The plots of several plays hinge on the questionable legitimacy of the kings heir and reveal that the
candidates purity of blood was less relevant to good kingship than the princes moral
fiber and approval by his subjects, both by members of the court and by the common
people. In those plays in which the kings tyrannical or lustful actions threaten to destabilize public order, comedia audiences never witnessed full-blown rebellion against
the monarchy but instead expected wrongheaded kings to realize the error of their
ways in the final scenes of the play. The plays, taken together, address the dangers of

Campbell, Jodi. Monarchy, Political Culture, and Drama in Seventeenth-Century Madrid: Theater of
Negotiation. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2007. 175 pp. Reviewed by Sara
Beam, University of Victoria.

39

Pons, Anaclet and Justo Serna.

Diario de un Burgus: La Europa del
siglo XIX vista por un valenciano
distinguido. Valencia: Los libros
de la memoria, 2006. Reviewed
by Jess Cruz, University of
Delaware.

40

tyranny and the need for kings to restrain their personal impulses in order to serve
their subjects well. Throughout, Campbell is attentive to similar themes in recent
literary studies on the comedia. Her analysis supports rather than challenges their
conclusions, but draws on a less canonical repertoire, which she successfully argues
is more representative of actual theater-going practices.

Campbell situates this repertoire within a historical debate about the nature of
absolutism. She argues that the theater was an effective space for political engagement
despite the attempts of Philip IV and the Count-Duke of Olivares to centralize political
authority. She does an excellent job of showing just how unsuccessful such efforts at
centralization were when it came to regulating the theater and satirical publications
in the capital. She also reveals that the ideas represented in the comediasthat there
were limits to a kings rightful authoritydovetailed with many Spanish political
theorists of the period.

Her rather superficial treatment of the question of absolutism and the substantive politics of the court, however, limits the scope of her investigation. Although
Campbell mentions some recent work on Spanish absolutism in passing, it would
have been interesting if she had contrasted the debates in the comedia more with the
actual complexities of governing seventeenth-century Spain than with a straw-man
vision of absolutism projected by the kings court. The theatrical repertoire, however,
works against more detailed political analysis: the plays considered by Campbell were
sometimes written in the 1640s and published twenty years later, making it difficult
to link specific plotlines to particular political events. Significantly, none of the plays
addresses the pressing question of the rights of traditional mediating bodies such as
the Cortes, so much at stake in the resistance to Olivares political reforms.
Such reticence about the pressing political questions of the day is not surprising
since, after all, people went to the theater to be entertained, not politically radicalized.
The value of Campbells study is to show us that audiences in Madrid found a wide
variety of representations of kingship to be consistent with their worldview. Kings
were fallible human beings, and seventeenth-century Spaniards were well aware that
their needs would never be well-served by tyrants.
_______________

Diario de un Burgus is an exceptional, valuable, and innovative book. It is

exceptional due to the historical source on which it is based: the personal travel diary
of a Spanish provincial notable. It is valuable because, despite the subjective and local tone of the main source, the authors masterfully avert delivering another piece of
local history, so unfortunately common among some segments of present day Spanish historiography. It is innovative because it provides a new perspective on many
aspects of the history of nineteenth-century Spain by using cutting edge approaches
from microhistory, cultural history, and cultural studies. The book is elegantly written, thoroughly researched, and very well edited. In the panorama of modern Spanish
historiography--this book is a breath of fresh air.
Jos Inocencio del Llano, the valenciano distinguido, left a traveling diary of nearly
a thousand pages to the delight of these two historians who found it when conducting
research on the history of Valencian railroads. While the text, according to the authors,
lacks literary quality, it provides a factual and unembellished testimony of the daily
life of a prototypical member of the Spanish bourgeoisie during the second half of the
nineteenth century; del Llano made the first entry in 1842 when he was fourteen and
dated his final entry 1895. The diarys plain prose is enhanced by the erudition of these
two historians who vitalize and invigorate Jos Inocencios dull narrative. The result
is an interdisciplinary text in which history, literature, and cultural analysis blend to
provide a well-crafted contribution to our knowledge of nineteenth-century Spanish
and European bourgeois culture.

Above all this is a book about travel. It is the story of a bourgeois gentleman
who visited the leading European capitals of his time, who experienced first-hand the
wonders of the first World Exposition in London, who strolled along the boulevards of
Paris during the years of Baron Haussmann, and who enjoyed the cultural and social
stimulation that Madrid could offer to a notable from the provinces. What motivated
Jos Inocencio to travel so much? Were his travels exceptional at a time when transportation and accommodations lacked the speed and comfort, respectively, of the present
day? These are the two fundamental questions put forward by the authors at the beginning of the book. The reasons for Jos Inocencios costly and sometimes audacious
journeys were diverse. To some extent they seem to have been educational, part of the
formation of a future businessman, a member of a commercial and industrial family
whose destiny was inevitably linked to the international markets. But for the most part
these travels were inspired by a new cultural impetus. Some were undertaken for the
pleasure of visiting fashionable places, making acquaintances in distinguished circles,
shopping in elegant stores, acquiring unique products, and enjoying the comfort--that
new nineteenth-century concept--of luxurious urban interiors and avant-garde means of
transportation. These were essentially travels of distinction, manifestations of elegance
and refinement that were characteristic of the new life styles that the bourgeoisie was
imposing. This explains why most of del Llanos journeys were to northern and central
Europe--those parts of the world ebullient with modernity--or to the big Spanish cities,
the fashionable European spas, and the vacation resorts close to his native Valencia. As
a traveler for pleasure, Jos Inocencio del Llano was engaging in a recently emerged
activity tourism-- still restricted to a select minority. But, as Pons and Serna point out,
these were also the trips of a tourist fascinated with progress, with technology, with
fashion, and with the physical care of his body. Del Llanos journeys to modern cities,
health spas, and cultured environments were an expression of modernity, of the desire
of bourgeois Spaniards to be part of the European bourgeois experience.
Modern tourism arose in the tradition established by the English upper classes
of sending their offspring to engage in what was known as the European Grand Tour.
At a certain age these affluent youngsters were sent southward to complete a sort of
journey of initiation through the main regions of the continent, not only to learn about
art, history, and the lifestyles of continental Europeans, but also to enjoy the pleasures
of travel. During the nineteenth-century the Grand Tour tradition was embraced by
many other elites across Europe. The case of Jos Inocencio del Llano shows the adoption of that fashion by upscale Spaniards. As may be expected, the itinerary chosen
by these traveling Spaniards was not toward the south but rather toward the more
developed north. It was an inverted form of Grand Tour that scholars know less: the
tour of the southern and eastern Europeans to the nodes of nineteenth-century western
civilization. Pons and Serna highlight how occasionally our distinguished traveler had
accidental or planned encounters with members of his restricted Valencian social circle.
He by chance ran into fellow countryman on the boulevards of Paris, when visiting the
exhibitions of the Crystal Palace, or at the Panticosa spa. On other occasions he goes
to specific places to meet friends and relatives who were also traveling for pleasure or
for business. Del Llanos testimony demonstrates the existence of a culture similar to
that of the British and French, as described by historians of modern tourism. The difference is that these Spaniards, like their Italian, Portuguese, or Russian counterparts,
traveled to the heart of advanced Europe seeking experiences of modernity. This, in my
opinion, is the most suggestive aspect of this study. These tourists of modernity have
left an abundant amount of testimonies. Besides the case of del Llano, Pons and Serna
mention the correspondence of Juan Valera, but there are plenty of other examples of
nineteenth-century Spanish travelers that deserve an extensive study, beginning with
Ramn Mesonero Romanos and up to Emilia Pardo Bazn.

41

Boone, M. Elizabeth. Vistas de

Espaa: American Views of Art
and Life in Spain, 1860-1914. New
Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007. 280 pp.; 31 color
ills.; 107 b/w ills. Reviewed by
Michelle Pauken Swindell, University of Texas at Dallas.

42

Through the description and analysis left by this curious traveler, Pons and
Serna recreate the main elements of the nineteenth-century European bourgeois universe. They write about the projection of bourgeois values and conduct in the making
of new forms of sociability, the introduction of new notions of elegance, and the spread
of a new consumer culture. They recreate the fascination of this social group with
comfort and technology. They refer to the bourgeois obsession with hygiene and with
the shaping of the body. They also offer insightful observations about the making of
the modern city to accommodate bourgeois cultural needs and economic ambitions.
Although the authors do not neglect local details --the genealogy of the del Llano
family, the role it played in the economic and political of Valencia, etc.-- they always
connect the particular with the general history of Spain and Europe. Thus, while basing their account in Valencia Pons and Serna offer an innovative interpretation of the
making of nineteenth-century bourgeois Spain. They portray a bourgeoisie with a life
style, a culture that is being shaped by the same molds that formed other European
bourgeoisies, mainly the French and the British. Many of the values, habits, and actions
of Jos Inocencio del Llano, and most notably his taste for traveling and vacationing,
were characteristic of the new bourgeois culture that was becoming hegemonic over
the course of the century. Pons and Serna highlight with thick descriptions and
penetrating analysis the significance of that life style and its crucial role in the shaping
of modern Spanish society.
_______________
Boones original contribution analyzes American artists changing interpretations of Spain as both countries grappled with issues of national identity and imperialism. The link between Spain and the United States is well-known in regard to art
collecting, literature, and politics in the nineteenth century; however, Boones in depth
analysis of artists visual conceptions of Spain is unprecedented. This thoughtful and
well-constructed book expands upon Boones dissertation and her 1998 exhibition
catalogue Espaa: American Artists and the Spanish Experience for the Hollis Taggert
Galleries in New York.
Boone introduces American fascination with Spain via non-visual culture,
particularly through the university curriculum, increasing political interests, and the
growing numbers of American travelers in the second half of the nineteenth century as
a result of the expansion of railroads in Spain.. Beginning chronologically with Samuel
Colman in 1860, the first American artist to travel to and extensively depict Spain, chapter
1 explores how the artists topographical images serve as a type of illustration for travel
literature and Washington Irvings documented Spanish experiences. Reiterating the
idealism of these texts, Colmans Spanish landscapes create a form of escapism from
Americas civil tensions. In chapter 2, Boone takes a more traditional approach to the
Spanish/American connection by looking at the influence of Bartolom Murillo and
costumbrismo painting. The Old Masters style, as well as the Spanish tropes, were
reinterpreted by American artists, such as George Henry Hall, in the 1860s. Despite
Spains increasing modernism, the images produced reflect a Spain unchanged by
time. The artists in the 70s and 80s, on the other hand, received their influences from
Diego Velzquez and contemporary, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal. As Boone argues in
chapter 3, Spains changing political climate as conflicts with North Africa escalated,
along with French influence in Spanish painting, led to a predominance of Orientalist
subjects by American artists. This chapter also includes a worthwhile discussion of
the controversy associated with Thomas Eakins well-known Gross Clinic, which was
produced as a result of the influences of Spanish realism.

Chapter 4 focuses on Mary Cassatt in Spain. Her original paintings concentrate
on women as subjects and reflect a melding of traditional Spain and French modernism. This chapter, which utilizes social history as its methodology, discusses the role

of flirting and how it manifests itself in Cassatts work and that produced by Spanish
and American male artists. In contrast to women as image makers, Chapter 5 explores
John Singer Sargents use of Spanish women as his subjects, particularly dancers and
cigar rollers. These works are then analyzed in relation to their American audience.
Chapters 6 and 7 address Spains split identity as Sunny Spain and Espaa Negra. In comparison to earlier landscape painters, artists such as William
Merritt Chase and Robert Frederick Blum, began to create more naturalistic images
of Spain and its people. In most cases, this led the artists to travel to more remote
towns rather than urban areas to maintain a convincing level of realism. While their
paintings reflected ideas of American dominance, there is a sense that by establishing
residency and learning the language that these artists working in the latter part of
the nineteenth century were painting from within the culture rather than outside of
it. Chapter 7 takes this integration even further by looking at the creative exchange
between Spanish and American artists and writers in 1898, thus the name Generation
of 98. These artists struggled with the identity of Old Spain and the complexity of
modernist ideas as they tried to create the real view of Spain. The resulting images
reflected this uncertain identity.
The 138 images included in Boones text have been carefully selected, and in
many instances are works that have received very little exposure. In addition, her
extensive bibliography and the three appendices (a chronological list of American
artists in Spain, visitors and copyists registered at the Prado, and visitors registered at
the Alhambra) are particularly useful to scholars.
The pioneering aspect of Boones undertaking should be recognized, and this
book is far from the final word on the subject. Because over three hundred Americans
visited Spain in the second half of the nineteenth century, there are moments when the
names of artists overwhelm the reader, particularly in chapters 6 and 7. Boone addresses
several key ideas in American representations of Spain, making it impossible to adopt
one methodology. Even though there is a chronological progression, each chapter must
be taken on its own. Boones formative text clearly paves the way for further research
and is an invaluable resource for scholars in Spanish and American art.
_______________
Angel Smith provides readers with a well written and solidly argued study of
the close relationship between the social and labor crisis in Catalonia and the collapse
of Restoration Spain. This is a significantly better researched and more nuanced history
of the origins and development of the CNT than its predecessors, especially Spanish
Anarchism: The Heroic Years, written by the anarchist Murray Bookchin in 1977.
Smith opens by stating his goal: to write a social history that also addresses
broader political manifestations. Using a wide range of primary sources, including the
archives of the Count of Romanones and Antonio Maura, newspapers and ephemeral
publications, as well as important secondary works, he makes a convincing case that
the industrial conflict in Barcelona and the subsequent alliance between the military
and Catalan employers were crucial ingredients for Primo de Riveras coup of September 1923.
Smith engages important debates over the role of the economy, skill, gender,
immigration, violence, and state repression in the trajectory of Catalan labor and the
creation and development of the Confederacin Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), the anarchist
union. This results in a clear picture of the reasons for the persistence of the CNT, the
weaknesses of its rivals, and the strength of the reaction the cenetistas provoked.
He begins by examining the economic and social changes that underlay the
transformation of Catalan industrial society, going on to discuss the perspectives of
the state and employers toward labor and their respective strategies for maintaining

Smith, Angel. Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labour

and the Crisis of the Spanish State,
1898-1923. International Studies
in Social History, v. 8. New York:
Berghahn Books, 2007. 405 pp.
Maps, tables, illustrations, bibliography. Reviewed by Andrew
H. Lee, New York University.

43

Payne, Stanley. The Collapse of

the Spanish Republic, 19331936:
Origins of the Civil War. New
Haven: Yale University Press
, 2006. x + 420 pp. Reviewed
by Samuel Pierce,
University of Florida.

44

control. He also provides a careful examination of labors responses. Throughout the

work, Smith seamlessly weaves in gender and culture as important factors in this
history rather than as sidelights.
This is labor history as it should be written. Social solidarity does not exist
in a vacuum in the work, nor is it exclusively limited to the popular classes. It can
work in opposition to those classes, when members of other classes demonstrate
solidarity in opposing general strikes and other actions by labor. The reasons why
an individual worker may willingly have joined the Sindicatos Libres rather than the
CNT are clearly laid out.
The factors underlying the institutionalization of violence, specifically of the
action squads, the members of the CNT whose sole employment was as thugs, are
also carefully examined. Smith offers a strong analysis of violence against workers and
employers, showing the generational conflicts that led to Barcelona becoming known
as Chicago on the Mediterranean.
My one complaint, which is not addressed to the author, is that the price of
the book ($89.95) puts it out of the reach of most readers. This is an important contribution to Spanish historiography, and it deserves a wide audience. Please make sure
your library buys a copy.
_______________


Between 1933 and 1936, Spains political parties became increasingly polarized,
until political violence became common and the country collapsed into civil war. This
study, a revision and expansion of the second half of Paynes 1993 book entitled Spains
First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931-1936, is an engaging and well-informed
inquiry into the failure of political compromise in the Second Republic. In this new
work, Payne is especially concerned with apportioning blame for the Republics collapse, concluding that every political party bore some responsibility for destroying
Spains democratic government.

Like Juan Linz (The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, Part II, 1978), Payne believes that the Republican political spectrum included loyal, semi-loyal, and disloyal
parties. The disloyal groups, such as the anarchists and committed monarchists, never
accepted the Republic and actively worked to overthrow it. Numerous times during
the Republic, these groups launched armed insurrections against the government,
including the failed Sanjurjada and various anarchist risings. These groups, however,
tended to reside on the fringes and did not enjoy significant popular support before
1936. More of a problem for the Republic were the semi-loyal parties, such as the Socialists and the Catholic CEDA. While these groups accepted the Republic as Spains
de facto government, they did not embrace republicanism and instead wished only
to use the Republic for their own ends. They reserved the right to work against it if
necessary.

The Republics loyal parties included Manuel Azaas left-leaning Accin
Republicana and Alejandro Lerrouxs centrist Radical party. According to Payne,
Azaa and his followers suffered from a sense of patrimonial Republicanism, by
which they equated the Republic with their own legislative program instead of as a
set of political ground rules that could accommodate numerous ideologies. However,
in order to carry out their proposals, Azaa and the other left Republicans needed the
support of the Socialists and so tolerated their extralegal activities and even considered
using a civil pronunciamiento to oust the CEDA from power. When the Popular Front
coalition returned them to power in early 1936, they threw moderation to the wind
and worked to implement even more radical reforms.

By contrast, Payne believes that centrist groups like the Radicals and other
liberal Republican parties were the only groups that took up positions primarily in
defense of constitutional democracy and the rules of the game (353). This conception

of the Radical party owes much to the work of Nigel Townson (The Crisis of Democracy
in Spain: Centrist Politics under the Second Republic 1931-1936, 2000), who has argued
that the Radicals offered a true centrist possibility for stabilizing the Republic. Ultimately they failed to do so, in part because the revolutionary insurrection by left-wing
groups in October 1934 strengthened the position of the right. Payne does not praise all
liberal Republicans, however. He aims special criticism at Niceto Alcal-Zamora, the
President of the Republic, whom Payne calls the major single factor in thwarting more
effective government who possessed a kind of messianic complex and practiced
a personalistic style of politics (136). Ultimately, his intervention failed to produce
a moderate governing coalition, and in late 1935 he took a leading role in destroying
the political authority of the Radicals.

The collapse of the center led to increased polarization during the first half
of 1936 and created the conditions in which extremists from both ends of the political
spectrum would engage in significant acts of political violence. Payne argues that Azaa,
who somehow thought that his alliance with revolutionaries would not encourage
revolutionary activity should share in the blame for the increasingly chaotic social and
political situation facing Spain, especially because he refused to target violent offenders
on both sides, focusing instead on suppressing the Falange (193). The governments
failure to contain the violence, which peaked in July, was used as a justification by the
military conspirators who sought to topple the Republic.

Paynes work demonstrates the complexity of the Republics political landscape, showing that a failure to create a stable center coalition doomed it. His analysis
convincingly shows that the main problem with most parties was a lack of commitment to parliamentary democracy, which led them to consider violent alternatives
seriously. While his conclusion that the left was more to blame for the collapse of the
Republic than the right will generate considerable debate, his synthetic account of the
Republics demise is currently the most complete study of this period, a well-written
and cogent analysis. However, as Payne notes, his study is far from the last word on
this subject, and much research remains to be done, especially on the last six months
of the Republic.
_______________
Tom Buchanan is the author of two previous books on Britain and the Spanish Civil War: his first was a discussion of a particular aspect, the war and the British
labor movement (1991); the second was a more general account, Britain and the Spanish
Civil War (1997). Now in a collection of ten essays, seven not published before, he has
explored in some depth both general trends and examples of British behavior in relation to Spain, paying most attention, not surprisingly, to those on the left.
These are illuminating essays, written in a clear-eyed way without the potentially distorting approaches that are so tempting in the case of the Civil War. The cause
of the Republic is seen neither as overwhelmingly heroic nor as one dominated by
manipulation by the Communists, dedicated to serving the needs of the Soviet Union.
The book begins with a discussion of the traditions of British perceptions of Spain.
During the war itself the view from the left dominated public opinion and favored
the Republic. There were many determined activists in Britain, most dramatically the
2,400 British volunteers, 500 of whom died in Spain. The British government policy
of non-intervention effectively undercut this support. That did much to help Franco
win the war and it also meant that the Soviet Union, through its supply of paid-for
arms, came to dominate the Republic. One will never know whether, if Franco had
been defeated, World War II would have taken place. Probably it would, but certainly
Germany and Italy would have been in a weaker position (although in reality Franco
proved to be a far less reliable supporter than they had hoped).
With the use of extensive sources and a keen sense of personality, Buchanan
provides us with several case studies of the involvement of various British individuals.

Buchanan, Tom. The Impact of the

Spanish Civil War on Britain: War,
Loss and Memory . Sussex Series
in Spanish History, Sussex Academic Press: Brighton (2007) 267
pp. Reviewed by Peter Stansky,
Stanford University.

45

Bowen, Wayne H. Spain During

World War II. Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press,
2006. 279 pp. Reviewed by Eric
R. Smith, Illinois Mathematics
and Science Academy.
46

He takes a dispassionate view, which works well. His figures are human beings in all
their complexity and defects. One essay discusses G.L. Steer, whose reporting for the
London Times and his subsequent book had a considerable effect in making the world
aware of the bombing of Guernica. In a later essay, Buchanan traces with perception the
career of the prolific author, John Langdon-Davies, who wrote mostly about Catalonia.
Even a most humanitarian effort, Spanish Medical Aid, the subject of another essay,
was full of personal rivalry. In its administration, as in so much else in the war, those
who were Communists or very supportive of the party were determined to serve it
with a religious fervor. They could be efficient and ruthless, and their determination
frequently was very helpful to the cause. But the needs of the party could pervert the
good fight. Buchanan presents a nuanced view of the past, as in his excellent essay
on Bob Smillie, the grandson and namesake of the famous labor leader, a founder of the
Independent Labor party. The young Smillie diedsome thought he was murdered
in a Republican jail, where he was a prisoner because his party, the ILP, was identified
with the allegedly Trotskyist POUM, that demonized enemy of the Communists.
Buchanan sorts out the story with great care, pointing out that although Smillie was
not given adequate or timely medical treatment for his appendicitis, it was unlikely
that he was deliberately neglected in order to hasten his death. Those who tried to
get him out of prison may have been in error in not trying to use the British consular
service. which was suspected, probably correctly, of favoring Franco. Most intriguingly,
Buchanan discusses how the tragic story fit into the ever-weakening position of the
ILP in Britain, its relation with the Labor party, and a reluctance to hurt the cause of
the Republic through exposing divisions on the left.
Buchanan also writes well about the British arts. There is a general essay on
British artists and Spain, and another telling the story of the artist Felicia Browne, a
completely inept soldier killed in the militia. (Although she was a politically insignificant
figure, I was surprised to discover that the British intelligence services were opening
her mail. One suspects that the states monitoring of political activities, particularly
of the left, was far more extensive than one might have thought.) In a piece on the
British volunteers, Buchanan displays a keen sense of their relation to those they left
behind. The two concluding essays on the afterlife of the Spanish Civil War in Britain
are less compelling than the other, more specific studies.
On a personal note, I accept Buchanans point that William Abrahams and
I exaggerated in Orwell: The Transformation (1979) by too easily accepting George
Orwells claim that Bob Smillie might have been murdered. In no retaliatory sense,
I will point out that Buchanan has made a double error about John Cornford, whom
Abrahams and I wrote about in Journey to the Frontier (1966). The iconic portrait of
Cornford was not taken by Helen Muspratt but by Michael Straight. He is confusing
it with the well-known picture of John and Ray, The Islanders, taken by Muspratts
partner, Lettice Ramsey.
But I mustnt end on a carping note. This is a splendid collection of essays
for anyone interested in the Spanish Civil War, in this particular case its relation to
Britain and the British.
_______________
Wayne Bowens Spain During World War II surveys Spanish and English
language research on Spains foreign and domestic politics from the end of the civil
war until 1945. In addition, Bowens footnotes reveal a heavy reliance on Arriba, the
official organ of the Falange, along with other periodical sources. He argues that the
Franco regime survived by the caudillos political maneuvering through a handful of
key institutions, each with divergent agendas.
The first two of the books eight chapters address the international situation,
which serves as the context for the domestic and cultural matters taken up later. Bo-

wens previous book (Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 2000) dealt with Nazi and Spanish
relations, and Spanish Naziphiles appear again here alongside a multitude of other
actors. Anti-communism and anti-liberalism were grand unifiers where little other
ground for agreement existed between factions. Indeed, unitary was the term the
Falange began using in late 1943 as a descriptor for the regime instead of totalitarian.
The tests the regime faced attest to the limits of the latter term.
Franco weathered several military conspiracies by 1944. The Falange, the only
fascist institution in the regimes coalition, desired a Spain with a diminished role for
Franco. During the May Crisis of 1941, Franco appeased Falangists by appointing
moderate members of the organization to key government posts. By 1944, when the
war turned against the Nazis, Franco replaced them. Reacting to the allied victory in
the war and fears that Spains dictatorship might now draw attention, Franco permitted municipal elections by male heads of households beginning in 1945 in order to
emphasize the conservative Catholic aspects of the regime, while denying or minimizing the semi-fascist elements of Francoism (91).
A panoply of internal conflicts tried Francos regime. Throughout these years,
Carlists retreated from politics almost completely. Monarchists and the church tended
to be anti-Falangist and the Falangists distrusted Opus Dei, who seemed too much like
the hated Masons. The Accin Catlica and Carlists were uncomfortable with aspects
of the Seccin Femininas agenda of womens athleticism. By 1941 when many young
Falangists had become disillusioned with Franco, the Divisin Azul, which was fighting the Soviet Union in alliance with the Nazis, achieved increased recruitment as
youth sought other corridors to advancement and influence. Yet Francos acumen in
isolating threats to his rule and appeasing key constituencies prevented any serious
threat from surfacing.
There were yet other actors in the early regime. Under the leadership of Salvador Merino, the sindicatos (combined worker and employer organizations legally
created in 1940) turned out hundreds of thousands of workers on various politically
significant days much to the fear of the Falange and the regime. By mid-1941, there
were nearly four million members organized into twenty-four sindicatos by industry
or profession.
Bowens longest chapter looks at the Spanish economy. His treatment of the
agricultural sector is especially interesting given the difference in approach between
Franco and the Republic. Spain de-industrialized after the civil war and the regime
made a number of poor decisions that assured the situation would persist. Working
conditions and government rationing in the early years of the regime eventually required the adoption of some of the same measures the Republic had instituted. Wages
fell to as little as 70 per cent of 1936 wages during the world war while the minimum
wage and other labor rights were lost under the regime. Although in the course of his
tenure Minister of Labor Jos Antonio Girn introduced family subsidies, minimum
vacations, expansion of retirement funding, health insurance, and other programs, a
ban on employment by former republican sympathizers assured a vast pool of unemployed. Nearly 500,000 Spaniards were without work in 1940. Axis sympathies further
exacerbated the economic crisis by inhibiting trade with the Allied nations.
Bowens assembly of secondary research also underscores the need for more
work in the archives. For instance, Bowen repeats the claim made previously that
women of the Seccin Femenina exercised more autonomy and freedom of action
than any previous womens organization in Spanish history. . . (177). For Bowen,
this seems intended to reveal the heterogeneity of experiences under Francos rule
his primary thesis but the veracity of the claim depends much on how one defines
autonomy and freedom of action. Other women hardly reaped such benefits. The
dictatorship permitted prostitution for years, but also banned contraceptives. Sexually

47

transmitted diseases ran rampant and the ranks of unemployed women especially
former republicans (who were considered degenerates anyway) filled out the prostitutes ranks.
Bowens substantial effort also concludes with a summary of his research in
the context of recent historiography. Bowen takes seriously the contentious work of Po
Moa, who insists that the Republic caused the civil war. The discussion is unnecessary
as Bowens labors here have value beyond how his work hinges to such claims.
_______________
BULLETIN BOARD
Oliveira Marques Prize Award

SSPHS Financial Statement,

ending March 29, 2005

48

This years winner for the best article on Portuguese history published in 2007
is Lorraine White, an independent scholar currently residing in Scotland. The winning entry was entitled: Strategic Geography and the Spanish Habsburg Monarchys
Failure to Recover Portugal, 1640-1668. It appeared in The Journal of Military History,
volume 71 (April 2007), pp. 373-409. One member of the prize committee described
Lorraine Whites article on the geo-strategic factors in the military campaigns of the
Portuguese Restoration, 1640-1668, as well written, well-researched, well-analyzed
and compelling in its readability. The rest of the committee enthusiastically agrees.
This article is a major contribution to understanding the success of the Portuguese
struggle against Spains efforts to regain the kingdom. It should be required reading
for all historians studying the Iberian Peninsula, 1640-1668. Francis A. Dutra, Chair.
________________
Bank Balance on 3/26/04
22,371.66
INCOME

Dues
8,326.98

Sale of mailing labels
50.00

Advertisements
500.00

Total Income
8,876.98
EXPENDITURES

Conference: UCLA (2004)
2,500.00

Conference: Charleston (2005)

Honorarium for speaker
200.00

Program Chairperson
80.88

Bulletin #3 of 2003: Printing
1,679.00

Bulletin #3 of 2003: Mailing
1,073.72

Bulletin #1 of 2004: Printing
1,650.00

Printing Estudios in Cordoba
520.70

Mailing Estudios to institutions
172.00

Book review editor
344.05

Book Prize: David Coleman
100.00

Bishko Prize [on behalf of Bishko Fund] 100.00

National Coalition for History
300.00

General Secretary for AHA
314.20

General Secretary 2/24/05
268.80

Membership secretary
25.45

New checkbooks
17.00

Total expenditures
9,445.80
Bank balance on 3/29/05
21,802.84
_______________

Bank balance on 3/29/05

INCOME

Dues

Mailing list rental

Total income
EXPEDITURES

Conference: UCLA (2004)

Conference: Charleston (2005)


Kenda Sweet Events

Organizer Timothy Coates

Bulletin #2/3 of 2004: Printing

Directory: Midland Printing

Directory: Mailing, Central Missouri

Estudios: Imagine

Book review editor

Dissertation Prize: A. Wunder

Bishko Prize: R Kinkade

National Coalition for History

AAUP Campaign

AHA reception

General Secretary: travel SSPHS


James DEmilio: website

Bank charges (bounced dues checks)

Total Expenditures
Bank Balance on 3/29/06
_______________

21,802.84
10,977.84
50.00
11,027.84
1,290.75
850.00
99.84
1,551.00
759.14
283.90
1,100.14
298.57
100.00
100.00
300.00
200.00
300.00
386.70
149.99
35.00
7,805.03
25,025.65

Bank balance on 3/29/06

25,025.65
INCOME after 3/29/06

Dues & donations
7,847.52

Transfer from Bishko Fund

450.00

[Prizes 2005, 2006, and 2007]

Earnings in money-market fund
912.50

Total income
9,210.02
EXPEDITURES after 3/29/06

Conference expenses: Lexington (2006) 105.09

Conference: Florida (2007): Hotel
2,500.00

Printing 200 copies of Bulletin 2005 1,643.76

Mailing Bulletin 2005
716.65

Book review editor
132.52

Mailing Estudios to institutions
68.75

Bisko Prize: James DEmilio
100.00

First Article Prize: Scott Taylor
100.00

AHA reception
365.01

Membership secretary
159.44

Mailing a back issue
5.25

Bank charges
10.00

Total expenditure
5,906.47
3/28/07 BALANCE NOW DIVIDED: BANK AND MONEY MARKET ACCOUNT
TOTAL BALANCE
28,329.20

Bank balance
Money-market fund
_______________

SSPHS Financial Statement,

ending March 31, 2006

SSPHS Financial Statement,

ending March 28, 2007

7,416.70
20,912.50

49

RESEARCH REPORTS
Published

Paper

Jodi Bilinkoff, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Introduction to Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and

Otilio Rodrguez. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2008.
Touched by Teresa: Readers and Their Responses, 1588-1750, in The Heirs of

St. Teresa of Avila: Defenders and Disseminators of the Founding Mothers Legacy,

ed. Christopher C. Wilson. Washington, DC: Institute for Carmelite Studies

and Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum (2006): 107-122.
Missionary Lives: Narratives from Seventeenth-Century Spanish America and
French Canada, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Minneapolis, MN, October
25-28, 2007.
_______________
Jonathan Schorsch, Columbia University

Published

In Progress

Published
In Progress
Grants and Fellowships
50

Disappearing Origins: Sephardic Autobiography. Prooftexts 27: 1 (2007): 82-150.

Early Modern Sephardim and Blacks: Contact and Conflict between Two Minori -

ties, in Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern

Times, ed. Zion Zohar. New York: New York University Press, 2005, 239-58.
Cristos-novos, judaismo, negros e cristianismo nos primordios do mundo atlan-

tico Modern: uma viso Segundo fonts inquisitoriais, in Dilogos da

conversao: Missionaries, indios, negros e judeus no context ibero-americano do

period Barroco, ed. Lucia Helena Costigan. Campinas, SP [Brazil]: Unicamp,

2005, 155-84.
Blacks, Jews and the Racial Imagination in the Writings of Sephardim in the Long

Seventeenth Century. Jewish History (Haifa University) 19: 1

(Winter 2005):109-35.
The Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the

Seventeenth Century Iberian World (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva: An Amsterdam Portugese Jewish Merchant Abroad in

the Seventeenth Century. Proceedings, Conference on Dutch Jewry, Jerusalem,

November 2004, ed. Yosef Kaplan (forthcoming, 2007).
Transformations in the Manumission of Slaves by Jews from East to West:

Pressures from the Atlantic Slave System, in From Slavery to Freedom:

Manumission in the Atlantic World, ed. Jack P. Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute

and Randy J. Sparks. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
_______________
Nol Valis, Yale University
Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War, ed. Nol Valis. New York: Modern

Language Association, 2007.
Sacred Realism: Religion and the Imagination in Modern Spanish Narrative.
Guggenheim Fellowship (2006-07); National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2006-07)
_______________

Gabriel Paquette, Trinity College, University of Cambridge

Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and its Empire, 1759-1808. New York:

Palgrave, 2008.

Published
Organized

A conference in December 2007 in Cambridge, UK entitled, Enlightened Reform in

Southern Europe and its Atlantic Colonies, c. 1750-1830.
_______________
Peter L. Reich. Whittier Law School
Siete Partidas in My Saddlebags: The Transmission of Hispanic Law from Antebe
llum Louisiana to Texas to California. Tulane European & Civil Law Form 22

(2007): 79-88.
Recent Research on the Legal History of Modern Mexico. Mexican Studies/Estudios

Mexicanos 23 (Winter, 2007): 181-193.
From Spanish Law to Common Law in the American Southwest, 1800-1900

(University of New Mexico Press).
The Law of the U.S. Mexico Border (Carolina Academic Press).
Appointed Sumner Scholar, Whittier Law School, 2007.
_______________
Ruth Pike, Hunter College, CUNY, Emerita
Black Rebels: The Cimarrons of Sixteenth Century Panama. The Americas 64: 2

(October 2005): 243-266.
_______________

Published

In Progress

Honors

Published

Clara E. Lida, El Colegio de Mxico

Clara E. Lida, Horacio Crespo y Pablo Yankelevich, comps.: Argentina 1976. Estudios

en torno al golpe de Estado. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 2008.
Los historiadores exiliados y Mxico, in Cientficos y Humanistas del Exilio Espaol en

Mxico. Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (2006): 89-97.
Espaoles inmigrantes y exiliados: el caso de Mxico, in De la Espaa que emigra a la

Espaa que acoge. Madrid:Fundacin Largo Caballero-Caja Duero (2006): 121-

131.
Cuba: un desastre anunciado, 1868- 1898, in Illes e Imperis. Estudis dhistria de les

societats en el mn colonial i postcolonial. Barcelona (2006): 69-82.
Sobre la hispanofobia en Mxico en el siglo XIX, in Xenofobia y xenofilia en la historia

de Mxico. Homenaje a Moiss Gonzlez Navarro. Mxico: Instituto Nacional

de Antropologa e Historia-Instituto Nacional de Migracin (2006): 159-171.
Paradojas de insercin y desarraigo: Los refugiados espaoles en Mxico, in

Mlanges offerts Rose Duroux. Clemont-Ferrand. Institut dEstudes

Hispaniques et Hispano-Amricaines, Universit Blaise Pascal (2007).
Book: Caleidoscopio del exilio republicano en Mxico.

In Progress
51

Papers-Lectures

Honors and Awards

Anarchisme et clandestinit, Les rvolutions ibriques de 1848, migration et exile.

cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, April-May 2006.
Los espaoles en Mxico: Perfiles y tendencias desde la independencia hasta la
guerra civil, Universit de Paris VII, Jussieu, Paris May, 2006.
Exilio y memoria. Congreso Internacional de Memoria e Historia, Universidad de
Granada, 2007.
El Risorgimento y Espaa. Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Mxico, 2007.
Orden del Mrito Civil, ortogada por el Estado espaol en reconocimiento a la
trayectoria profesional, July, 2006.
Chair: Ctedra Mxico-Espaa, Banco de Santander-El Colegio de Mxico, since 2006.
Premio de Educacin, Ciencia y Sociedad Dra. Clara Lida, Instituto de Ciencia y
Tecnologa del Distrito Federal, Gobierno del Distrito Federal, Mxico, November,
2007.
_______________

Published or in press

In Progress
Papers

Grants and Fellowships

52

David A. Messenger, University of Wyoming.

LEspagne Rpublicaine: French Policy and Spanish Republicanism in Liberated France In
press with Sussex Academic Press.
A Real Break or Reluctant Parting? France, the United States and the Spanish
Question, for the Journal of European Studies 38:2 (2008): in press.
Our Spanish Brothers or As at Plombires: France and the Spanish Opposition
to Franco, 1945-1948, French History 20:1 (2006): 52-74.
Exporting Republicanism: The French Governments Defence of Political Prisoners
in Francos Spain, in Matthew Berg and Maria Mesner, eds., After Fascism:
The Re-Democratization of Western European Society and Political Culture since
1945 In press, Manchester University Press, 2008.
Against the Grain: Special Operations Executive in Spain, 1941-1945, in The
Politics and Strategy of Clandestine War: Special Operations Executive, 1940-1946
ed. Neville Wylie. London: Routledge (2007): 177-192.
Nazi Criminals, Hidden Assets and Allied Intelligence in Iberia, 1943-1947 Book.
Interpreting Neutrality: The Spanish Foreign Ministry, the Allies and Bretton
Woods Resolution VI, 1945-1947, 2008 SSPHS Conference, Ft. Worth, TX.
The Spanish Civil War, Foreign Interference and the International System, Conference on Civil War in the Twentieth Century, Vancouver, BC, 2007.
The Memorialization of the Holocaust, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 2007.
Economic Intelligence, Postwar Politics and Hidden Nazi Assets: Operation Safe
Haven in Spain, 1944-1948, International Workshop on Intelligence and the Holocaust, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 2006.
Holocaust Educational Foundation, Fellowship for the Summer Institute on the
Holocaust and Jewish Civilization, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 2007.
University of Wyoming Course Development Grant for course, Memory and National Identity in 20th Century Europe, 2006-2007.
Workshop Fellowship for Intelligence and the Holocaust, United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 2006.
University of Wyoming International Programs- Summer Innovative Course Grant
for Study Abroad class Central Europe and the Holocaust, 2006-2007.

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