Independent Seville: A Mosaic of Ancient Cultures

Modern-day Spain is a country changing at bewildering speed. In less than half a century, a predominantly rural society has been transformed into a mainly urban one. A dictatorship has become a democracy. A once-repressed society is being spoken of as a future ‘Sweden of the Mediterranean’. John Hooper’s masterly portrayal of the country and its people explores the causes behind these changes. Focusing on issues that affect ordinary Spaniards – from crime to education and from gambling to changing sexual mores – it paints a fascinating picture of contemporary Spanish society. This revised, updated edition incorporates some 70,000 words of fresh material and three new chapters, including sections on immigrants and Romanies and the Spaniards’ efforts to come to terms with their past. It is the essential guide to understanding twenty-first-century Spain: a land of paradox, progress and social change. https://www.amazon.com/New-Spaniards-2nd-John-Hooper/dp/0141016094/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1JF800OQAF8QI&keywords=the+new+spaniards&qid=1571309508&s=books&sprefix=the+new+span%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C212&sr=1-1

Spain's Moorish past is evident everywhere you look. For centuries, Christians, Muslims and Jews lived in Spain side by side in peace, and it was home to some of the greatest minds in the world. After the Moors' expulsion in the seventeenth century, much of their knowledge, skill and artistry was lost. Jason Webster originally travelled to Spain to play the flamenco guitar. A qualified Arabist, he now embarks on a quest for Spain's forgotten Arab legacy, and gets embroiled with characters who are as wild and original as those he described so vividly in Duende. What lessons can we learn today from the harmony that existed for so long in medieval Spain - and from the subsequent expulsion of its Muslims and Jews? https://www.amazon.com/Andalus-Unlocking-Secrets-Moorish-Spain/dp/0385605072/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=andalus+unlocking+the+secret&qid=1571305122&s=books&sr=1-1

The war in Spain and those who wrote at first hand of its horrors. From 1936 to 1939 the eyes of the world were fixed on the devastating Spanish conflict that drew both professional war correspondents and great writers. Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Josephine Herbst, Martha Gellhorn, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Kim Philby, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Cyril Connolly, André Malraux, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and others wrote eloquently about the horrors they saw at first hand. Together with many great and now largely forgotten journalists, they put their lives on the line, discarding professionally dispassionate approaches and keenly espousing the cause of the partisans. Facing censorship, they fought to expose the complacency with which the decision-makers of the West were appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. Many campaigned for the lifting of non-intervention, revealing the extent to which the Spanish Republic had been betrayed. Peter Preston's exhilarating account illuminates the moment when war correspondence came of age. https://www.amazon.com/We-Saw-Spain-Die-preston-paul/dp/1845299469/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1D3JDK03444NF&keywords=we+saw+spain+die&qid=1571309824&s=books&sprefix=we+saw+spai%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C212&sr=1-1

This splendidly illustrated volume in the Day in the Life series and the first to focus on a European country depicts Spain on May 7, 1987, as captured by 100 international photojournalists. The photographs contrast modern and traditional life: the Iberia Airlines shuttle between Madrid and Barcelona that carries 3000 passengers a day; farm laborers and fishermen; topless sunbathers; a punk-rocker; men playing dominoes; the stock exchange; produce markets and coal miners; steelworkers and gypsy children; an assembly line and a subway-turnstile jumper; a bullfighting school and a flamenco dancer; windmills turned into weekend homes. Among the 275 color and black-and-white photographs, some images are brilliantly artistic, others amusing, moody, throbbing with hustle, charming or solemn, providing a lively close-up of a day in the life of this Iberian land. https://www.amazon.com/Day-Life-Spain-Rick-Smolan/dp/0002179679/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a+day+in+the+life+of+spain&qid=1571304931&s=books&sr=1-1

The Time in Between takes place in the 1930s and follows the story of a young Spanish woman who is suddenly abandoned by her lover in Morocco and has to forge a new life and identity for herself there. The Spanish Civil War is about to erupt and she cannot return home, so she begins using her skills as a seamstress to support herself. She soon becomes wrapped up in the politics of the time when she is approached to become a spy for the Allied Forces. While the first part of the book doesn’t take place during Spain, it’s a different perspective of the Spanish Civil War, written by a female Spanish author as opposed to an expat man. https://www.amazon.com/Time-Between-Novel-Maria-Duenas/dp/1451616899/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1571309683&sr=1-1

The appearance, more than sixty years after the Spanish Civil War ended, of mass graves containing victims of Francisco Franco’s death squads finally broke what Spaniards call “the pact of forgetting”—the unwritten understanding that their recent, painful past was best left unexplored. At this charged moment, Giles Tremlett embarked on a journey around the country and through its history to discover why some of Europe’s most voluble people have kept silent so long. Ghosts of Spain is the fascinating result of that journey. In elegant and passionate prose, Tremlett unveils the tinderbox of disagreements that mark the country today. Delving into such emotional questions as who caused the Civil War, why Basque terrorists kill, why Catalans hate Madrid, and whether the Islamist bombers who killed 190 people in 2004 dreamed of a return to Spain’s Moorish past, Tremlett finds the ghosts of the past everywhere. At the same time, he offers trenchant observations on more quotidian aspects of Spanish life today: the reasons, for example, Spaniards dislike authority figures, but are cowed by a doctor’s white coat, and how women have embraced feminism without men noticing. Drawing on the author’s twenty years of experience living in Spain, Ghosts of Spain is a revelatory book about one of Europe’s most exciting countries. https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Spain-Travels-Through-Silent/dp/0802716741/ref=sr_1_1?crid=29EZYTAR3HIV6&keywords=ghosts+of+spain+travels+through+spain+and+its+silent+past&qid=1571306235&sprefix=ghosts+of+spain%2Caps%2C221&sr=8-1

Video. Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon travels from southern to northern Spain to tell the story of some of Europe's most exciting and vital art. Here, he presents an exploration of Moorish Spain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008wthr/episodes/guide 3 episodes

This handbook to contemporary Spain and the Spanish language is packed with essential information on politics, economy, and institutions, covering the basics that are taken for granted by most Spaniards. Intended for readers without specialist knowledge in any of the subjects concerned, this is a valuable handbook for English-speaking students of Spanish. https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Spain-2Ed-Christopher-Ross-dp-0340762152/dp/0340762152/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1571305398

Video (00:14:22) How does tipping work in Spain? What are tapas? What time to do shops open? What are the Spanish eating hours? Do Spaniards take siestas? James Blick answers the top 10 Spain travel tips so you can explore Spain like a local! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPBzlSvp_Nk

In this exuberant memoir, an enthusiastic young Australian discovers a passion for Spanish culture (especially flamenco) as she explores Seville and Madrid. https://www.amazon.com/Only-Spain-Foot-Stomping-Firecracker-Flamenco/dp/1402293852/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=only+in+spain+a+foot-stomping&qid=1571307498&s=books&sr=1-1

Video (00:05:31) There are some really weird borders in the world, and Spain is probably the cause of some of the strangest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6tJ-mvhznU

Video (00:29:11) Award winning documentary. Fascinating and beautifully shot documentary which examines the spread of Islam and how its crusaders finally took most of Spain, arriving from Morocco in 711. In one summer the "Arabs had taken half of the peninsular and in five years controlled almost all of the country". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gqrBXG6ec4