Recasting Culture and Space in Iberian Contexts

Focusing on the interplay of space, culture, and power in Iberia since 1850, this collection of case studies demonstrates how questions about social identities and power are also questions about mapping, texts, and concrete spaces. The late nineteenth and twentieth centuries are marked by a drive toward grandiose ideological conceptualizations that affected the production of ideas about modern geographical space. The contributors examine the links between this historical context and the emergence of specific intellectual traditions, as well as everyday discourses and practices. They also explore the making of conflicted spaces in Portugal and Spain, and in foreign sites impacted by Iberian-origin exile or colonial settlement. The essays compel readers to consider exactly how people's political identifications have been forged through cultural struggles over the uses and meanings of physical spaces, whether these are in Barcelona, Bilbao, villages in the Alto Douro of Portugal or in Galician Spain, Malacca, the countryside near vila (the "City of the Saints"), or Catalans' wartime London.