International Journal of Iberian Studies - Volume 26, Issue 3, 2013

This article presents the concept of social capital as complementary to Hallin and Mancini’s ‘polarized pluralist’ model, which has been used in relation to both Spain and Portugal. In our view, while the current Spanish context may be characterized by ‘partisan’ journalism, this is less true of Portugal. We propose that Hallin and Mancini’s polarized pluralist model be complemented by the concept of social capital to comprehend the specific underpinnings of the power constellations surrounding the press in Portugal and Spain. We will start by comparing the current situation of the press in both countries, with analysis centred on the continuities and discontinuities between past and present in a context of transition to democracy. The evolution of the press under the right-wing dictatorships of Franco and Salazar will then be historically contextualized, with the aim of drawing attention to ideological differences that may currently account for the greater political fissures between the right and left wings in Spain compared to Portugal. Lastly, we will examine the threat that the Portuguese Colonial War and the Spanish separatist movements posed to national, hegemonically defined, ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983) and their subsequent influence on the evolution of press freedom in both countries.

Media, and particularly state television, became a key element in the strategy for change during transition in the Iberian Peninsula in the mid-1970s. Television became a means for the new government to talk directly with society, to influence public opinion and to get citizens’ support. Within this context of political transition, this article aims to show a comparative view of the role played by state television in Portugal (RTP) and Spain (TVE) in order to draw similarities and differences between transition models from both a political point of view and the standpoint of television media. The sources used for this study are TVE and RTP programmes from the archives of the respective television headquarters, in-depth and face-to-face interviews with journalists who lived through the transition in the Iberian Peninsula, and an updated bibliography.

The recent introduction of Spanish media groups to the Portuguese market and the latest disputes in the telecommunications industry have put the spotlight on the Iberian market, in which companies of both countries coexist, compete and collaborate in order to consolidate their businesses and grow on the international scene. The convergent interests of big companies such as Telefónica, Prisa, Portugal Telecom and Lusomundo have opened up the debate on the high concentration of communication companies on the Iberian Peninsula. The purpose of this article is to establish similarities in the behaviour of these groups between 1995 and 2010 and to identify their common interests.

While the term ‘Iberian’, as in Iberian Studies, is far from ambiguous, its use is often short of comprehensive. In the social sciences, and more specifically in the field of migration studies, few students or scholars of the Spanish case are well versed in the realities of Portugal and vice-versa. But as Iberianists, unless we truly study the whole of the Peninsula, we limit the reach of our research and forego the rich insight that comparative work provides, especially in terms of theory building. This article proffers two reasons why the comparative study of the politics of immigration to Spain and Portugal has not been maximized and two reasons why an intensified sense of ‘Iberianism’ would deepen our own understanding of the social realities within the Peninsula and offer our counterparts in other area studies, particularly migration scholars, the tools with which to build on migration theory.

It is the aim of this paper to investigate the experience of Basque exiles that came to Ireland during the Second World War to flee General Franco and his post–civil war repression. Many of these exiles previously occupied senior political and military positions in the Republican administration and were now forced to live in exile far away from Spain and their families. They escaped to Ireland because it was a democratic, friendly and Catholic nation, yet none of these men were idle. They continued the fight against international fascism from abroad. This article also details the exhaustive efforts Franco’s fascist representative in Dublin employed to force the Irish authorities to extradite these dissidents back to Spain to face imprisonment and possible execution. The research for this article has been gathered from archival investigations in the diplomatic files of Madrid and Dublin.

France Divided – the French and the Civil War in Spain, David Wingeate Pike (2011) Brighton: Sussex University Press, ISBN 978-1-84519-514-4 (hbk), £35.

The Novels of Josefina Aldecoa. Women, Society and Cultural Memory in Contemporary Spain, Nuala Kenny (2012) Woodbridge: Tamesis Books, 258 pp. ISBN 978-1-85566-244-5 (hbk), £55.

Life-writing in Carmen Martín Gaite’s Cuadernos de todo and her Novels of the 1990s, María-José Blanco López de Lerma (2013) Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 220 pp., Tamesis, Série A: Monografías, ISBN 978-1-85566-247-6 (hbk), £50.

Intersecciones: Cuerpos Y Sexualidades En La Encrucijada, Raquel (Lucas) Platero (2012) Madrid: Edicions Bellaterra, 327 pp., ISBN 978-84-7290-603-7 (pbk), €18.

The Spanish Civil War; Exhuming a Buried Past, Anindya Raychaudhuri (ed.) (2013) Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 230 pp., ISBN 978-0-7083-2578-0 (hbk), £90.00.