Iberian Studies Research Articles

By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination by William Viestenz

Reviewed by: By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination by William Viestenz Nathan Richardson Viestenz, William. By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2014. 223 pp. Franco’s recourse to the symbology of rule by divine right is familiar. Viestenz’s investigation into this mechanic via a series of sophisticated close readings of the work of five canonical Spanish and Catalan novelists and poets examines the mechanisms and effects of this recourse to make a case for the role of the sacred in the very logic of political order, be it fascist, nationalist, or otherwise. Viestenz begins with a brief review of the Franco regime’s consolidation of sovereignty by way of a sacred symbolism founded in creative historiography. He traces the roots of this historiography to nineteenth century (Balmes, Cortés, Clarín) and Generation of ‘98 thinkers who employ rationalist discourse to wrest religion from the exclusive realm of the sacred and then attach it to political machinations. In their writings political questions become theological ones. More insidiously, dissenters become outsiders (anti-Spain) and a threat to eternal essences (sacred Spain) which then demand violence via scapegoating for sustenance. The sacred, thereby, is converted into a potent tool of political organization long before Franco appropriates it to forge divergent Nationalist groups into what Viestenz calls a “single sacred communion” (30). By the late 1940s, the aftermath of the Second World War seals the fate of fascism and makes an embrace of Catholicism and recourse to the sacred the only viable discursive option for preserving Francoism. At the same time, the regime never relinquishes its monopoly on frequent and “nearly incomprehensible displays of violence” (32). In Viestenz’s extensive use of Rene Girard’s theory of violence and the sacred, the two means are inseparable. Viestenz turns early to Girard in his first literary analysis of his study, a reading of Catalán author Joan Sales’s novel Incerta gloria. Like those to follow, Viestenz’s reading is close, challenging, and tightly intertwined with likewise carefully and deeply considered theoretical work. Over the course of the study Viestenz will engage with the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Henri Bergson, Rudolf Otto, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Heidegger among many others. His are not mere passing references but extensive reviews and analysis of their theories which can challenge the reader to keep up. Lengthy untranslated passages in Castilian, Catalán, and even Galician, moreover, demand an audience engaged in a broader understanding of the literature of Spain proposed by Joan Ramon Resina and championed by Viestenz as Iberian Studies. In the case of Sales’s Incerta gloria, a novel begun in 1948 and retouched by the author over the course of the Franco dictatorship, Viestenz understands it as registering the need during the dictatorship for consecrated symbols that can mobilize political will in [End Page 552] order to establish and sustain the logic of regime continuity. Such symbols, however, rely on violence, which in Sales’s novel manifests itself in the multipronged destruction of Catalonia and the Second Republic enacted by actions both fascist and anarchist, both groups driven by a similar obsession with returning Spain to some mythical holy state. In the face of such violence, the novel’s protagonists turn to religion as a “result of an ontological aporia that requires metaphysical truth” (46). Religion is not rational, merely necessary—like the violence it produces and requires. Juan Goytisolo’s Reivindicación del Conde don Julián continues this exploration of the dark consequences of a state’s need to turn to exclusionary violence for sustenance. Rather than succumbing to violence, in Goytisolo’s novel the protagonist wrests the very principle of violence from the regime he so despises. Over the course of the novel he becomes the sovereign, symbolically infecting, invading, and desecrating the homeland previously defiled by the enemy. Together with Sales’s novel, these works show “that sovereignty based on a victimary mechanism functions like a mathematical formula of recursion where immolation and exclusion are programmed into the very reiteration of power” (75). The process reveals the...

By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination by William Viestenz

Reviewed by: By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination by William Viestenz Olga Sendra Ferrer Viestenz, William. By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2015. x + 223 pp. Plunging into William Viestenz’s book By the Grace of God is like jumping into the middle of an ongoing conversation. However, it is not a conversation among strangers, but, quite the contrary, among dear friends with whom it is always a pleasure to speak because we are always greeted by new ideas and new possibilities. The interlocutors are so familiar to us that we do not need an introduction: Joan Sales, Juan Goytisolo, Luis Martín Santos, Mercè Rodoreda, Juan Benet, and Salvador Espriu, together with illustrious theorists and thinkers that expand and enhance new approaches to the works of these well-known authors, offering us new readings that situate them in a wider and increasingly productive context. William Viestenz’s original study sets its sights on the ideological construction of Francoism in order to uncover how the sacred/secular binary that came to establish the concept of sovereignty during the dictatorship was employed to define [End Page 483] and shape diverse ideas about what a modern nation in the Iberian Peninsula is and how it operates. In this fashion, contemporary Spain becomes a textual discourse in which to locate forms of power that channel and manipulate political thought through a Catholic mythology that offers collective modes of identification to substitute the lay principles of the Enlightenment. Francoism here serves as a point of departure for a detailed textual analysis of the works of the aforementioned authors, with Viestenz turning to novels as well as poetry as he demonstrates how the dictatorship created an extreme rhetoric of sacred purification and exceptionalism that wound up configuring not just the political state of the past but also the cultural environment of the present in Spain. The author consequently shows how the sanctity of supposedly secular symbolism is generated through the arts and culture, which can function as political agents per se, whether because of how they react to preceding ideologies or how they challenge the alleged truths that are already integrated and accepted in the social milieu of the moment. The two main organizing principles of By the Grace of God lie in this innovative perspective and converge to give us a revitalized conception of Iberian studies. In the first place, the proposition that guides the author’s main narration is the sacred/secular binary, and how the former stretches out toward and subsumes the latter, thus prevailing in the formation of a national secular identity. The second axis of this study refers to the formation of an Iberian canon that challenges the traditional perspective of Hispanic studies, which, while initially appearing to be a question of perspective that only affects the selection of texts chosen for analysis, actually becomes an essential element of Viestenz’s proposal. The structure of the book responds, in turn, to the development of this gray area in which the sacred merges with a secular political imaginary. In this context, Francoism serves the author to mount a theoretical framework that allows him to analyze the chosen works and the contexts in which they develop. To that end, the introduction and the second chapter, “He aquí una plenitud española,” reach back to the nineteenth century and trace the origin and development of the notion of a sacred Spain as a political category and a tool for the discursive construction of the national imagination. To do so, Viestenz resorts to two key concepts, Nietzschean religion and post-secularism, which allow him to elaborate an analytic vocabulary that he will apply to a detailed analysis of his selected literary works and which he will continue to develop and expand as the book advances. For example, the concept of history developed by Hegel serves Viestenz to see how Franco’s discourse fits into liberalism in spite of the fact that during the nineteenth century it was precisely an anti-Hegelian analysis of history that was used to locate the source of public...

Francisco Botelho de Morais e Vasconcelos, poeta ibérico da pré- Ilustração e fundador da Academia dos Unidos

Francisco Botelho de Morais e Vasconcelos (1670-1747), a Portuguese poet of Castilian language, lived and bonded with remarkable Spanish intellectuals of his time; he reached fame while still alive, he was raised to the status of Honorary Member of the Spanish Royal Academy, and he left us a legacy which includes a prolific and ground-breaking poetic and literary work. He set up a literary academy in his own hometown, an episode we will further explore, by including an unpublished manuscript authored by some of its members. He is, notwithstanding, an insufficiently celebrated author within the ambit of Iberian Studies.

Invention of Space: City, Travel and Literature by Enric Bou (review)

Reviewed by: Invention of Space: City, Travel and Literature by Enric Bou Robert Davidson Keywords Travel Literature, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Enric Bou, Robert Davidson, City, Borders, Rivers, Bearn, La Plaça Del Diamant, Eduardo Mendoza, Walter Benjamin, Ussr bou, enric. Invention of Space: City, Travel and Literature. Madrid: Iberoamericana; Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2012. 278 pp. Enric Bou’s latest book is a compelling collection of essays and meditations on what it means to travel and experience both the new and familiar alike. Drawing on contemporary cultural theory for interpretive tools, the author explores “literary contact with [the] city, seen partly as a journey, or an exploration of the everyday” as well as “the various phases of [the] literary journey through the twentieth century, an experience that has become progressively easier and more affordable and has opened the door to contact with the Other” (13). Over eleven chapters, Bou’s analysis ranges from the nature of the literary city and concepts of Iberian comparativism, tourism, the experience of exile, and literary engagements with the nonplace. Along the way, specific cities such as Madrid, Paris and Barcelona receive attention—with the Catalan capital capturing the lion’s share. Invention of the City is without a doubt an ambitious book, but I would argue that its great strength lies precisely in its sheer breadth. It is not often that one picks up a volume with the range of this one, and it is to Bou’s credit that it works. Bou is adept at juggling many different texts as he develops his arguments, and is able to draw very productively on examples from across the spectrum of European literature. Likewise, his use of theory is judicious and appropriate. Themes and topics drive this work, not any fealty to fashionable critics. If anything, Bou goes against the grain by steadfastly “normalizing” Catalan literature. What I mean [End Page 485] by this is that he unapologetically and matter-of-factly integrates literary production from Catalonia—in both Catalan and Spanish—into the overarching arguments that he presents. Of course, the strong presence of Barcelona drives this to a certain extent, but nevertheless, for the Hispanist or Iberian Studies reader it is most refreshing to see. Chapter 1, “Reading the City,” serves as the book’s introduction, and while Bou invokes such heavyweight critics as Halbwachs, Nora, Augé, and Benjamin, he nevertheless focuses his study through the lens of literature: “Literary texts open up a line of inquiry into the city, which has no comparison in the social science field. Literature allows us to discuss the notion of urbs and civitas, the transformation of space, the juxtaposition of layers” (23). Intrigued by how literature influences urban image formation, and at the same time cognizant of the ways in which the concept of the city changes literature, the author then briefly points to how these rubrics are at play in the cases of Madrid and Barcelona, thus setting the stage for analyses to come. Before delving directly into city literature, though, Bou first outlines his approach to comparativism in the Iberian Peninsula. His take is unique and inspired by cultural geography. Here, he considers the social construction of place, landscape, and experience through a reading of mapping processes and literary engagements with rivers. Nicely illustrated by a series of plates, this second chapter sees the author put his nonhierarchical take on peninsular cultures into practice in a distinctive way. “Borders in the City: Rewriting Walls” is the Madrid-centric third chapter. Informed by work on borders by Predrag Matvejetić, Étienne Balibar and Marc Augé, as well as by the spatial theory of Deleuze and Guatarri, Bou uses Madrid for his discussion of urban boundaries. Works discussed here include Cela’s La colmena, Martín-Santos’s canonical Tiempo de silencio, and Gómez de la Serna’s intriguing and cultural studies-friendly, El Rastro. The author’s conclusion that heterotopias “establish borders inside the city, which can be easily crossed but that delimitate strong separations between regular and experimental life, allowing for an expansion of the limits of space” is convincing (97). For its part, “Decrèpita i teatral? On Literary Explorations of Barcelona” is a...

Theorizing Iberian Studies

Theorizing Iberian Studies Robert Patrick Newcomb In recent years, a series of proposals have been made with the aim of radically reconceptualizing the discipline of peninsular literary and culture studies (see Moraña, Resina, Santana). These proposals have in turn led scholars interested in peninsular literatures and cultures to reimagine the field from an Iberian perspective, as a means to recognize the national and linguistic diversity of the Iberian Peninsula. This diversity has too often been obscured by the implicit or explicit monolingualism of Hispanism and Lusofonia as disciplinary paradigms for the study of the language, literature, and culture of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. The growing number of scholars invested in Iberian Studies have instead asked how peninsular literary and cultural studies might be reimagined, and reinvigorated, by placing the Spanish and Portuguese canons into critical dialogue with each other, and with Galician, Catalan, Basque/Euskadi, and Latin American and North African immigrant writers, cultural actors, texts, and traditions. Major Iberian Studies symposia have been held in recent years at the University of Lisbon (2011), Stanford University (2011), The Ohio State University (2013), and UC Santa Barbara (2013). And Iberian Studies working groups have been formed in Europe (Project DIAA—Diálogos Ibéricos e Ibero-Americanos), the US Midwest (Midwest Iberian Studies Group), and California (UC Comparative Iberian Studies Working Group). It is within this context that Robert Patrick Newcomb of the University of California, Davis, on behalf of the MLA Division on Luso-Brazilian Language and Literature, and in collaboration with the AATSP, convened a panel discussion on “Theorizing Iberian Studies,” which took place during the afternoon of Friday, January 9, 2015 at the MLA Convention in Vancouver. The panel reacted to a discrepancy recently noted by Santiago Pérez Isasi and Ângela Fernandes, who observe, “The field of Iberian Studies, which could be defined as the methodological consideration of the Iberian Peninsula as a complex, multilingual cultural and literary system, has known an exponential development in the last years; however, it still lacks solid theoretical and methodological reflections”(1). The Theorizing Iberian Studies panel brought together researchers who have actively contributed to the ongoing Iberian Studies debate, and who approach this emerging field from a variety of geographic, disciplinary, and linguistic perspectives. The panel’s first speaker, Mario Santana (University of Chicago), delivered comments titled “Besides Theory: Critical Practices in Iberian Studies.” Santana noted that recent conferences and symposia have generated discussion on the (perceived) need to have a “theory” of Iberian Studies. However, rather than ‘theories,’ Santana argued that what is urgently needed are theoretically informed ‘practices’ that would facilitate the expansion of material archives, which in turn may facilitate the discovery and articulation of critical problems relevant to the field. Santana’s comments focused specifically on one of these areas in need of exploration, namely the role of translation in the constitution of literary inter-relations in the Iberian Peninsula. The second speaker, Jorge Pérez (University of Kansas), asked, “¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de Estudios Ibéricos?” Pérez contended that a federal model of cultural coexistence within the Iberian Peninsula, though necessary, is insufficient if scholars are to truly reconfigure [End Page 196] the discipline of peninsular studies. Drawing on the Mediterranean and North African dimensions of Iberian subjectivity, Pérez argued that if scholars fail to question the terms in which Iberian Studies have been conceived, they in effect promote a new paradigm that is already obsolete. In “¿Cómo y desde qué posiciones hermenéuticas e ideológicas hablamos de Estudios Ibéricos?” the third speaker, Silvia Bermúdez (University of California, Santa Barbara) developed reflections first presented in May 2012 at the First Annual UC Comparative Iberian Studies Symposium, hosted at UC Davis. Her paper assessed how Iberian Studies can be a useful transcultural paradigm for understanding the diversity and complexity of the geopolitical space constituted by the Iberian Peninsula. The final speaker, Robert Patrick Newcomb (University of California, Davis), addressed “Iberianism’s Lessons.” Newcomb discussed schemes developed by prominent fin-de-siècle Portuguese and Spanish writers to foster closer and more equitable political, economic, and cultural relations between the Iberian Peninsula’s component peoples...

Literaturas nacionales, literaturas supranacionales: el lugar de los Estudios Ibéricos

National Literatures, Supranational Literatures: the Position of Iberian Studies. In this article I defend the need for the existence of the scientific field of Iberian Studies which deals with Spanish and Portuguese literary history from a supranational and not from a merely comparative (in the most traditional sense of the word) perspective. At the same time, I propose that the foundations for these Iberian Studies are not in any way a recent invention; instead, they respond to the same need to overcome strictly national literary histories, a need that was already present as early as the 19th century.

Men, power and liberation: readings of masculinities in Spanish American literatures

Each contribution to this book discusses key issues arising from the portrayal of men and the formation of masculine identities in a range of representative and landmark texts, fictional and non-fictional, drawn from different historical periods and from various countries in the Hispanophone Americas. There is an emphasis on the ways in which writers from Argentina (Manuel Puig), Chile (the Spaniard Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga and the Chilean Nicolas Palacios), Mexico (Gustavo Sainz and Angeles Mastretta) and the Hispanic USA (Jennifer Harbury and Francisco Goldman) have explored the themes of love, friendship and trust and their transformative power for gender relations in situations and contexts where deception, exploitation and oppression are often disturbingly present. There is also a discussion of the applications, insights and limitations of different theoretical frameworks and concepts relevant to the task of producing gendered readings, including Connell’s ‘world gender order’ and ‘hegemonic masculinity’, as well as ‘the cult of virility’ as characterised by Still and Worton, Chela Sandoval’s ‘decolonial love’ and ‘methodology of the oppressed’ and Beasley-Murray’s ‘posthegemony’. This book was originally published as a special issue of Iberian and Latin American Studies.

The comparative study of Spain and Portugal in the social sciences: Insight from the study of immigration to the Iberia peninsula

Abstract 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.

Architecture

This essay briefly examines the role of architectural history in María Rosa Menocal's effort to test the conventions of Romance philology. By drawing the familiar built environment into esoteric debates about language and literature, Menocal sought to render medieval Iberia more accessible to general readers and to create a scholarly space for interdisciplinary research that bridges peninsular religious and linguistic divisions. The result of this effort, particularly in the American academy, is today's medieval and early modern Iberian studies, where scholars enjoy greater flexibility in their research and teaching even while continuing to grapple with the theoretical and political risks implicit in Menocal's approach.

Editorial: Madrid and urban cultural studies

Abstract This Editorial opens the special issue of the International Journal of Iberian Studies titled ‘Reading Madrid: Perspectives from Urban Cultural Studies’ by suggesting mobility as a trope that is just as relevant to close textual readings and to a wider understanding of Madrid’s cultural production as it is to questions of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, more broadly considered. Appropriately, given the objective at hand, the impetus for this move is sparked by a textual analysis – of Madrid’s presentation throughout the opening sequence from director Pedro Lazaga’s 1965 film La ciudad no es para mí.

Мир. Вызовы глобального кризиса. Испания

The next in the series of essays dealing with trends and prospects of social/political transformation of the West is the analysis of problems in Spain, prepared by the Center of Comparative Social-Economic and Social-Political Studies of IMEMO. The first to speak was S. Khenkin, Dr. Sci. (History), from MGIMO-University (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) who stressed the systemic character of the political community crisis in Spain. I. Prokhorenko, Cand. Sci. (Political Science), dealt with possible directions of Spanish development underlining risks of the nation’s return to a periphery status within the EU. A. Avilova, Cand. Sci. (Economics), analyzed Spanish economics in the time of crisis. A. Kozhanovskii, Cand. Sci. (History), from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Russian Academy of Sciences), P. Yakovlev, Dr. Sci. (Economics), Head of Center for Iberian Studies at the Institute of Latin America (Russian Academy of Sciences), E. Ermol'eva, Cand. Sci. (Economics), researcher at IMEMO also took part in the discussion.

KSZTAŁCENIE TŁUMACZY JĘZYKA HISZPAŃSKIEGO W POLSCE

The aim of the article is to present the state of teaching Spanish in Poland, including translator training. The author analyzes the position of Spanish lessons in Polish school curricula and suggests an overview of all the teaching levels. This analysis shows that although the knowledge of Spanish is still rather limited in Poland, the language has been systematically becoming more and more popular, especially among secondary school students in big cities. This fact is confirmed by the increasing number of students who choose Spanish as their second foreign language (the number has grown from 8,650 in 2002/2003 to 15,640 in 2006/2007) as well as by the increasing number of schools in which a bilingual class with Spanish may be found (currently 5 grammar schools and 14 secondary schools). At the same time, Spanish language studies still enjoy unchanging popularity among university applicants, as a result of which the number of Spanish language departments is consistently growing – not only in state higher education institutions, but also in private ones. According to the data provided by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, in 2007 there were 1,783 students of the Spanish language and Iberian studies. Whilst discussing training of translators of Spanish it must be emphasized that although some higher education institutions include ‘knowledge of translation’ in their graduate profiles, the first and so far the only state higher education institution offering graduate and post-graduate studies in translation is the University of Silesia. Post-graduate studies for translators of Spanish are also provided by the Jagiellonian University and the University of Warsaw.

The State of Catalan Studies in the United States

Having been asked to comment on the state of Catalan in the United States, I must consider it an invitation to speak about myself. Not because my vanity prompts me to say, as Louis XIVth allegedly said, that I am the thing itself, but rather because, in the absence of programs of Catalan in this country, I can only refer to my subjective experience to answer a question that has been addressed to me for reasons that must appear pertinent to others. At the outset, a word of caution with respect to terminology is in order. American academe is fond of attaching the word to just about anything as a way of producing instant disciplines out of virtually any passing interest or fad. is the pedantic version of the isms that proliferated in the early 20th century. The word, in the current context of academic instability, operates much like the suffix ism did, albeit adapted to an era that has sought to dismantle aesthetic certainties. On seeing the word used as a crutch, it is useful to ask whether the radical to which it attaches refers to a structured branch of knowledge or is the telling sign of institutional indefinition. A term like Literary launched by F. R. Leavis to propose the reform of English into a self-grounded discipline--the very discipline that has now been dismantled beyond repair--, displays the same oblivious redundancy as the term Lake Lagunita, which marks one of the features of the Stanford campus landscape. It shows, that is, a semantic layering indicative of the cultural substitution affecting a relatively invariable object. Study, in its ordinary acceptation, began simultaneously and inseparably with the invention of literacy, while the latter, in its alphabetical modality, came to be in the process of transmitting through study, i.e. memorization, poetry that previously had been performatively composed. The Spanish language still retains a vague memory of the essential synonymy between literacy and learning in the term letrado, which refers to a person qualified in the legal profession. Mechanically, appears to endow with structure and epistemological coherence things that often lack both. An anecdote will show what the stakes are. A few years ago, when the proposal to change the name of Stanford's department of Spanish and Portuguese was being considered, I met with the director of the Latin American program to ask for his thoughts on the new name: Iberian and Latin American Studies. Contrary to my expectation, this affable colleague offered insurmountable opposition to the word and so we settled on the alternative term cultures. He did not object, as one might expect from a serious academic, to the ambiguity of the term but rather to use of it, a rather peculiar objection in view of its proliferation throughout the university. I was told that you, that is, a literature department, not studies, we do. Etymology was certainly not my interlocutor's strong suit. If we did not do studies, what might our pedagogical mission be? Never mind that I had previously taught in departments of Hispanic and of Romance Studies, had co-founded a Literary Studies program, and had published in journals that flaunt the word in their titles; none of this seemed relevant or sufficiently empirical when it came to define academic turf. One could reasonably object that Iberian Studies, a concept I have promoted for years, suffers from the same vagueness that prompts the unrestrained and sometimes imaginative use of studies. Although I am inclined to grant the point, I would nevertheless offer a line of defense, which goes roughly like this: by itself the adventitious and potentially redundant concept of cannot substantivize adjectival objects of interest (i.e. visual studies) and is thus superfluous in relation to well-established fields of inquiry. We not have poetry studies but rather poetics, rhetorical studies but rhetoric, historical studies but history, law studies but law, philosophical studies but philosophy, and so on. …

Reservoirs promote the taxonomic homogenization of fish communities within river basins

Most studies analyzing patterns in biotic homogenization of fish communities have used large-scale approaches, while the community-level effects of species introductions and local extinctions within river basins have been sparsely analyzed. In this article, we examine patterns in freshwater fish α- and β-diversity in relation to the presence of reservoirs in a Mediterranean river (Guadiana river; Iberian Peninsula). We used fish samples from 182 river localities and 59 reservoir ones to address two main questions: (i) do reservoirs favor the establishment of invasive fish species?; and (ii) do reservoirs bear taxonomically homogenized fish communities? Although total species richness was not different between rivers and reservoirs, the latter had more invasive species and less native ones. Fish species found in reservoirs tended to be larger ones, but invasive species of any size showed higher preferences for reservoirs. Native species that were rare or absent in reservoirs were those that showed higher sensitivity to invasive species in rivers. Reservoir fish communities were taxonomically homogenized in relation to river ones, both when considering all fish species and using only natives or only invasive ones. Our results suggest that invasive species occupying reservoirs constitute an ecological filter excluding most native species from such systems. Invasive species in the study area are often widely introduced elsewhere, while native species found in reservoirs are congeneric and ecologically similar to those found in other Iberian studies. Thus, we conclude that reservoirs promote taxonomic homogenization at multiple spatial scales, while could also be promoting the functional homogenization of Iberian fish communities.

Recruitment, growth and population size structure of Pollicipes pollicipes in SW Portugal

A general model for the life cycle of Pollicipes pollicipes in SW Portugal is proposed integrating results from a study on recruitment, growth and population size structure. A brief summary of literature concerning Pollicipes published since Margaret Barnes' review paper of 1996 is presented. Recruitment of P. pollicipes on conspecifics (number of cyprids and juveniles with Rostro-Carinal length (RC) < 0.6 mm per adult) was intense during summer and autumn, but inter-annual variation in the timing and duration of recruitment season was observed. Different indices of recruitment used in Iberian studies were compared. Spatial correlation between shores (∼ 40 km apart) in SW Portugal suggests that cyprids of P. pollicipes are being affected by the same larval pool and physical transport processes operating at this scale. Recruitment of P. pollicipes in SW Portugal was higher on the low shore (∼ 2.5 times) than on the high shore. Most recruits were attached to the lower half of the adult peduncle. The period of maximum attachment of juveniles (RC < 12.5 mm) to conspecifics was summer and autumn (average of 15 juveniles per adult), while spring was the season with a lower number of juveniles growing on adults (average of 2 juveniles). Size of juveniles attached to conspecifics was rarely greater than 6 mm RC. Individual annual growth rate of P. pollicipes that settled on a denuded surface was 15.7 mm RC (individuals ≤ 1 year old) which corresponds to a monthly increment of 1.3 mm RC in their first year of life. Size structure analyses of P. pollicipes attached directly to primary substratum and/or to the base of conspecifics showed that barnacles at the low tide level reached a higher maximum size, indicating that growth at this level was faster than on the high shore. A higher temporal variability between these size-frequency distributions was detected in spring (March to May). In March, two cohorts (< 1 year old, > 1 year old) were identified. In May and August, it was difficult to identify individual different cohorts. From mid autumn to early spring, as a consequence of recruitment of barnacles to the primary substratum, it was again possible to identify two cohorts.

“Un mes en Londres”: Angel Cabrera Latorre at the British Museum (Natural History) and the launch of an international career

Angel Cabrera Latorre (1879–1960) was the authority on mammalian studies in Spain during the early twentieth century. Even though his first professional progress at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid were driven by the former naturalists of Comisión Científica al Pacífico (1862–1866), nevertheless Oldfield Thomas (1858–1929) acted as his mentor. Cabrera's mastery was learned at the British Museum (Natural History) in London where he spent a month during 1910. After returning to Madrid, Cabrera introduced in a short time several modifications in the vertebrate collections, museum's display and nomenclature, and in 1914 contributed the volume about mammals to Fauna Ibérica. Cabrera's Mamiferos remains a landmark in Iberian faunal studies.

Librarian for Latin American and Caribbean Studies in U.S. Academic and Research Libraries

The present research investigates the evolving requirements, roles, and responsibilities of the Latin American and Caribbean studies librarian. Content analysis was used to study 94 position announcements published from 1970 to 2007. Variables were examined from the following categories: position description, educational background, work experience, technology skills, languages, personal traits, duties, and subject responsibilities. Cross tabulations and chi-square tests were executed to determine the statistical significance of relationships between variables. An advanced degree in a related subject field is expected by employers. Strong Spanish language abilities are required, and a working knowledge of Portuguese is highly desirable. The average number of duties per announcement has increased over time, reflecting the evolution of the position from being narrowly specialized to being more diversified. The Latin American and Caribbean studies librarian may also be responsible for additional subjects, in particular Iberian studies.

Beyond convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain

While Américo Castro’s convivencia remains an influential concept in medieval Iberian studies, its sway over the field has been lessening in recent years. Despite scholars’ best efforts to rethink and redefine the concept, it has resisted all attempts to transform it into a workable analytical tool. The article explores the malaise affecting convivencia, and suggests that the idea has become more of an impediment than a help to medieval Iberian studies. It argues that convivencia retains some of its former influence because scholars insist on understanding it as a distinctly Ibero‐Islamic phenomenon. However, this article suggests that the evidence for Islamic influence on interfaith coexistence in Christian Spain is scarce. Instead of continuing to embrace the nationalist myth of Spain’s unique status in medieval Europe, scholars need to acknowledge the basic similarities in the Christian treatment of religious minorities north and south of the Pyrenees. The article also explores other aspects of convivencia’s problematic legacy: polarization of the field between “tolerance” and “persecution,” and the inattention to the nuances of social and political power relations that affected Jewish–Christian–Muslim coexistence in Christian Iberia.

The future of postcolonial approaches to medieval Iberian studies

This article delineates some of the historical characteristics of medieval Iberia that make postcolonial studies especially appealing for a renovation of this multi‐disciplinary field, and it suggests specific openings for future research inflected by postcolonial studies. By discussing in particular the concepts of mimicry and transculturation, this piece exemplifies avenues for nuancing the notion of cultural contact, for rethinking the overused reliance on medieval Iberia’s “three cultures,” and it redirects attention to the fields of Latin American and colonial studies as sources of crucial theoretical debates.

New directions in the study of medieval Andalusi music

The study of medieval Arabo‐Andalusian music has recently begun to play a more prominent role in medieval Iberian Studies. New directions have begun to open up and the field is currently moving forward using multiple new approaches. Important medieval texts, previously thought lost, have surfaced in recent decades creating a new body of evidence for scholars to interpret. In addition, a number of already well‐known texts are now being re‐evaluated from a musicological, rather than a purely literary, standpoint and are revealing significant new insights about the musical cultures of medieval Iberia. Painstaking research in a variety of different archives and collections has begun to offer a more detailed sense of the context of medieval musical performances, the lives of performers, their economic and social status, and so forth. And comparative studies across historical time periods and regional traditions are providing radical new interpretations of the history of certain musical structures, modes of transmission, and individual repertories. The present survey offers an overview of recently published research in the field of medieval Arabo‐Andalusian music and sketches out a variety of new lines of research that are currently, or should be, followed by future scholars.