International Journal of Iberian Studies - Volume 28, Issue 1, 2015

This article analyses the attempts made by regime authorities – and in particular the Ministry of Information and Tourism (MIT) – to supervise foreign correspondents based in Spain during the months following the death of Franco. It also reveals the professional profile and background of those reporters charged with relaying the Transition and the difficulties they encountered in their coverage of events. The article examines the delicate nature of the foreign reporters’ news agenda in Madrid, analyses their modus operandi and commitment to the story and highlights how these reporters were under constant surveillance by MIT officials in post-Francoist Spain. It concludes by attempting to weigh the contribution of the foreign journalists to Spanish democratic regeneration. The article forms part of a wider research project on the international press and the Transition funded by the Spanish Ministry for Education, which involved field research in Paris, Rome, London, New York and at the Spanish National Archives in Madrid, as well as interviews with surviving foreign correspondents.

Unexplored areas in EU literature regarding regional representational channels give impetus to the research. Novelty lies in the article’s concentration on reciprocal regional governmental and EU relations to prove that Regions with Legislative Competencies interact in EU decision-making, to influence it both formally and informally. It relies on a Multilevel Governance (MLG) approach, considering varying levels of influence of sub-state, state and supranational entities within the EU. The Basque Country’s high degree of autonomy and resources maximize its ability to influence policy. The article explores the most effective forms of representation and the policy areas where its activism has an impact.

As elsewhere, perceptions of Muslims and Islam suffered a negative impact in Spain as a consequence of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. This trend was particularly noticeable among the conservatives, who traditionally combined the support for Catholic hegemony with an exceptionally warm approach towards Islam and the Arab world. By focusing on the image of Muslims as constructed by the traditionalist newspaper ABC, this article exposes the dynamics underlying the dramatic shift in the perception of Islam among Spanish conservatives at the turn of the twenty-first century, in the context of changing domestic and global scenarios.

Within the framework of the debate on violence against women in Spain, this article aims to analyse three Spanish films that constitute a turning point in the media and political configuration of the issue. The specialist literature agrees that, despite good intentions, the attention paid to the matter since the 1990s has reinforced rather than dismantled the cultural imaginary that sustains violence against women by placing them in the eternal position of victims. However, La vida secreta de las palabras, Mataharis and Elisa K. offer challenging narrative strategies to undermine this hegemonic grammar of recognition. Through our analysis, we will investigate how their approach is linked to an attempt to go against the grain of traditional technologies of representation and, hence, the sadism in narratives portraying gender violence (not only in Spain but in the international arena). Second, we will examine how, by framing that attempt within particular historical backgrounds that sustain (or have sustained) violence against women, the films, in the last instance, deal with the rewriting of historical memory.

This article addresses the use of media for self-representation by the Roma community in Spain, and their process of negotiating a local, national, and transnational ethnic and political identity. I focus on Voces gitanas: Rromane glasura/Roma Voices, a radio programme created in the city of Barcelona in 2005, using as its frame of reference cultural studies and urban theory, including David Harvey and Manuell Castells. Based on radio shows transmitted online and through FM radio, I discuss how the programme constitutes a tool for promoting culture, conducting political activism and discussing issues important to local communities. Through constant performances that translate as definitions of culture, I argue, the Roma community is able to restore and participate in the dialogue on self-determination and minority rights in a different sphere of discourse, both locally and globally, at the same time that they also influence their own (and others’) understanding of their ethnic identity.

El Amigo Alemán. El SPD y el Psoe de la dictadura a la democracia, Antonio Muñoz Sánchez (2012) Barcelona: RBA Libros, 512 pp., ISBN: 9788490062852 (p/bk), €25

La destrucción de Guernica: periodismo, diplomacia, propaganda e historia, Herbert R. Southworth (2013) Ángel Viñas (ed.), Granada: Comares Historia, 726 pp., ISBN: 9788490450321 (p/bk), € 35.00

Skeletons in the Closet, Skeletons in the Ground: Repression, Victimization and Humiliation in a Small Andalusian Town: The Human Consequences of the Spanish Civil War, Richard Barker (2012) Brighton, Portland and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press in Collaboration with the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Iberian Studies, xxvii+283 pp., ISBN: 9781845195366, p/bk, £25

Unlikely Warriors, Richard Baxell (2014) London: Aurum Press, xii+531 pp., ISBN: 9781781312339, p/bk, £12.99