Studia Historica. Historia Contemporánea

Introduction to the Themed Issue. Reforming Cities in Liberal Spain (1875-1936): Space and Political Action

Santiago de Miguel Salanova — 2025-01-02

A New Politics for the Town: Political Culture and Municipal Action of the Republicans in Guadalajara

Javier San Andrés Corral — 2025-01-02

In 1899, the Republicans gained the municipal elections in Guadalajara. The republican victory, repeated in 1901, was the result of an intense mobilisation, led by a generation of leaders who sought to overcome the old ways of historical republicanism. The Republican majority challenged the hegemony that the Count of Romanones and the liberals had imposed on the Town Council, as it introduced new policies into the local agenda, aimed at good government, budgetary and fraud control, extension of health care and education and secularisation, provoking the intervention of the Government to control the Town Council. Based on the election records, the minutes of Town Council sessions and the press, the political and governmental culture of the republicans is analysed in a small town where, despite the overwhelming power of the caciques, practices typical of modern mass politics were beginning to emerge.

Elections and Local Power in Bilbao between 1917 and 1936: An Urban and Social Perspective

José María Beascoechea Gangoiti — 2024-12-27

This research proposes an exercise that crosses four key variables: geographical origin, urban spaces, social groups, and politics. Their correlation explains the changes in political cultures and local power, as well as those specific to Bilbao’s society, a city marked by strong social inequalities and influenced by a context of world war, social demands, pandemic, and political change.

The “Internal Reform” of Valencia and the Production of Problematic Spaces: the Plots of San Francisco and the Neighbourhood of Pescadores (1880-1906)

Jorge Ramón Ros — 2024-12-27

This article discusses the projection and legitimization of several urban reforms in the city center of Valencia (Spain) during the Bourbon Restoration. Specifically, it analyses the process of socio-spatial stigmatization of two interconnected neuralgic zones (the Pescadores quarter and the ancient grounds of the Convento de San Francisco) located between the city council and the main railway station. To this end, it explores how the urban development interventions on them were influenced by various pejorative perceptions elaborated by journalists, police forces and local politicians about their urban fabric, the socio-economical activities of their inhabitants and the hypothetical consequences of their existence for the city. Moreover, it studies the sources and key actors of social conflict in both areas, subjected to selective policing and urban degradation processes.

Municipalities as Agents of Political Integration. Palma de Mallorca, 1890-1923

Pere Salas-Vives — 2024-12-27

This work is based on the consideration of local/municipal power as an essential element for the construction and consolidation of the liberal State and not as its antithesis. Accordingly, the central government is not understood only as a domain external to the locality in permanent struggle with the power arising from the municipality, but rather they are part of the same state system, in constant competition and collaboration, in such a way that they both reinforce each other. That is, the State must be considered, following Pierre Bourdieu, as a field of power rather than a compact block, where specific forms of capital compete. Specifically, we will focus on the analysis of the integration factors in the State that municipal policy entailed during the Restoration, especially after the implementation of universal male suffrage, using the case of Palma, capital of the province of the Balearic Islands.

Government, Administration and Municipal Control of Regulated Prostitution in the Modern City. Barcelona and the Special Hygiene Service (1889-1892)

Santiago de Miguel Salanova — 2024-12-27

This article examines the phenomenon of the regulation of prostitution in Barcelona between 1889 and 1892. The historiographical interest of this period is explained by the fact that during those years the activity was under the direct jurisdiction of the local authorities, who were responsible for the regularisation of special hygiene services by virtue of the publication of the Royal Order of 4 January 1889 by the Ministry of the Interior. Analysis of this process of municipalisation requires the exploration of the characteristics of the project that Barcelona City Council developed to deal with a health and public order problem that had grown in parallel with the expansion of the city’s population. Understanding this process requires studying the dynamics of government, administration and control of prostitution, woven both in the sphere of municipal policy and in the development of everyday life in the city.

The sale of the Magistral Right in the Historical Archive of Almodóvar del Campo (Ciudad Real): Adjudication and Process

Jesús Viñas González — 2024-12-27

The main aim of this work is to analyse and study the institution of the “derecho maestral” in the municipality of Almodóvar del Campo (Ciudad Real). We will proceed to deal with its concept, its origin and evolution, as well as its transcendence and the trail of legal-social conflicts left behind, determining the agricultural structure of the population.

Orientalism and Spanish Nationalism: some Considerations on Francisco Javier Simonet and Spanish Arabism

Fernando Granell Olszewski — 2024-12-27

in the config.uratio.n of Spanish national identity, the interplay between East and West plays a substantially more important role than in other European regions. During the 19th century, with the rise of romanticism and oriental trends, Arabists strove to rescue and situate the Muslim past of the Peninsula in a comfortable place within the founding fiction of the Spanish nation. Far from finding common ground, Arabists engaged in a dialogue with the romantic myth, both including and excluding the Andalusian past from their national narratives, which were closely linked to a particular political project. Such was the case of Francisco Javier Simonet, whose discourses can be analysed in both their liberal and traditionalist facets. Focusing on his texts written around the African War (1859-1860), the aim of this article is to provide a few considerations on the link between Arabism and the creation of an imperial nation discourse.

The Human Data of the Battle of Mallorca (1936): Combatants and Casualties on Each Side

Manuel Aguilera Povedano — 2024-12-27

The Battle of Mallorca (August-September 1936) was an important offensive by the Spanish Republic with the participation of all the arms of the army and the militias that ended in failure. Historiography has debated the figures for participation and casualties with very different data. The authors have carried out for the first time a quantitative (and nominal) study based on all available archival sources and reveal that the number of troops and casualties (dead and wounded) on each side were similar. However, mortality was much higher (more than three times as high) on the republican side due to health logistics and prisoner executions. The Balearic Government and the Generalitat de Catalunya are working to identify the remains of the graves from this battle.

Cuando el humo se alza. La violencia iconoclasta y anticlerical en Vallecas durante la guerra civil (1936-1939)

Fernando Jiménez Herrera — 2024-12-27

Anti-religious violence occupied a central role in revolutionary justice. The religious were the first victim, in general, and, in some cases, the only one in the towns of the Republican rear. The churches were seized by the various committees and micro-powers that took effective control of the streets. They put them at the service of the needs of the town, turning them into community spaces. This article will analyse the main anti-religious actions in the Municipality of Vallecas and the reason for this violence and its supporters or detractors. A novel aspect offered by the text is the possibility of comparing republican and Francoist sources on this violence and assessing the differences in judicial investigations.

The Catholic Church and Resistance to Dictatorships. The German (1935-1939) and Spanish (1962-1966) cases

Javier Pinilla Palomino — 2024-12-27

The objective of this essay is to present a comparative study focused on the Catholic resistance to two fascist dictatorial regimes in two chronological periods in which both dictatorships were fully consolidated in their respective countries. A special emphasis will be placed on exposing the main characteristics of both resistances; analyze what were the actions development to oppose the government persecutions; and show the main similarities and differences between both resistance models.

Florentino Pérez Embid and the “Amigos de Maeztu”

Onésimo Díaz Hernández — 2024-12-27

This article will show the influence of the person and thought of Ramiro de Maeztu on the work of Florentino Pérez Embid. In particular, I examine the relationship between Pérez Embid and the “Amigos de Maeztu”, an association formed by supporters of the traditional monarchy who met to spread Maestu's ideas through magazines, books, and pamphlets. These activities included the magazine Reino

Federico Silva Muñoz and the Spanish Transition. When Francoist Liberalization Collided with Democracy

Adrián Magaldi Fernández — 2024-12-27

Federico Silva Muñoz was one of the most recognized voices of late Franco’s aperturismo. Known by the nickname «Efficiency Minister» for his management of the Public Works portfolio, the Catholic sectors of the regime did not take long to appeal to Silva as the highest representative of the aperturismo horizon and, later, of reformism. However, when the construction of the new democracy began, Silva seemed anchored in the narrow coordinates of the regime, becoming one of the founders of People’s Alliance during its neo-Franco origins. Frustrated with the evolution of change and contrary to the Constitution, he ended up placed on the margins of the system as a representative of an anti-constitutional reactionary right. The journey through the biographical trajectory of Federico Silva during the Spanish Transition will shed light on the complex evolution of the aperturismo discourse, its origin, evolution and limitations, as well as the difficult structuring of the Spanish right in the face of the new democracy.

Children Victims of Ethnonationalist Terrorism. The cases of eta and the ira

Pablo García Varela — 2024-12-27

The indiscriminate nature of the terrorist actions of eta and the ira against the civilian population claimed the lives of many minors, some children of members of the army and the police. Attacks difficult to justify that questioned the moral position of both organizations. The comparison between the two terrorist groups will give us the opportunity to study the typology of these attacks, as well as their justification discourse and how to deal with the consequences of these actions.

D’Aunet, Léonie (2023): Viaje de una mujer a Spitzberg (ed. Rodríguez Varela, Rita). Berlín: Peter Lang. 199 pp. isbn: 9783631900871.

Luis Arias González — 2025-01-02

Martykánová, Darina (2023): Los ingenieros en España. El nacimiento de una élite. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco. 341 pp. isbn: 978-84-1319-593-3.

Carlos Larrinaga — 2024-12-27

Reseña de dicho libro

Roldán Cañizares, Enrique (2023): La República romana de 1849 y su Constitución. Una utopía en la Italia del «Risorgimento». Sevilla: Athenaica. 130 pp. isbn: 978-84-19874-03-0.

Manuel Carbajosa Aguilera — 2024-12-27

García Moscardó, Ester (2021): Roque Barcia Martí. Auge y caída de un nuevo mesías revolucionario. Granada: Comares. 304 pp. isbn: 978-84-1369-156-5.

Sergio Sánchez Collantes — 2024-12-27

Martykánová, Darina y Walin, Marie (coords.): Ser hombre. Las masculinidades en la España del siglo xix. Sevilla: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2023. 356 pp. isbn: 978-84-472-2465-4.

Carmen Chamarro Santamatilde — 2024-12-27

Rabaté, Colette y Rabaté, Jean-Claude (2023): Unamuno contra Miguel Primo de Rivera. Un incesante desafío a la tiranía. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg. 312 pp. isbn: 9788419738035.

Raúl Moreno Almendral — 2025-01-02

Lower, Wendy (2022): La fosa. Almería: Confluencias. 306 pp. isbn: 9788412455946.

Igor Barrenechea — 2024-12-27

Sanz Hoya, Julián (2022): España en camisa azul: Falange, cultura política y poderes locales. Granada: Editorial Comares. 164 pp. isbn: 9788413694788.

Antonio Castilla Martín — 2024-12-27

Kinstler, Linda (2024): Ven a este tribunal y llora. Barcelona: Gatopardo Ediciones. 346 pp. isbn: 9788412740325.

Igor Barrenechea — 2024-12-27

Rodríguez Jiménez, José Luis (2024): Bajo el manto del Caudillo. Nazis, fascistas y colaboracionistas en la España franquista. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. 422 pp. isbn: 9788411486101.

Gaizka Fernández Soldevilla — 2024-12-27

La última obra publicada por el profesor José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez, Bajo el manto del Caudillo, es el magnífico fruto de un concienzudo y largo trabajo de investigación. El autor ha utilizado múltiples fuentes, bastantes de ellas inéditas, como las del Ministerio de Exteriores, para luego elaborar una narración histórica bien escrita, atractiva y con vocación divulgativa que, además, arroja nueva luz sobre la intrahistoria de la dictadura franquista, sus conexiones internacionales y la influencia de la vieja ultraderecha sobre la nueva generación de los años sesenta.

Alonso Dávila, Isabel (coord.) (2023): Plaza de los Lobos 1968-1977: memorias de estudiantes antifranquistas de la Universidad de Granada, Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada. 265 pp. isbn 978-84-338-7299-9.

Alberto García Molinero — 2024-12-27

Review of the book ISABEL ALONSO DÁVILA (coord.), Plaza de los Lobos 1968-1977: Memorias de estudiantes antifranquistas de la Universidad de Granada, Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2023. 265 pp. ISBN 978-84-338-7299-9.

Ortega López, Teresa María; Cabana Iglesia, Ana; Cabezas Vega, Laura y Canalejo Alonso, Silvia (2024): Mujeres y agricultura en la política española del siglo xx. Madrid: Cátedra. 312 pp. isbn: 9788437647074.

Cristóbal Martínez Molina — 2025-01-02

González Cuevas, Pedro Carlos (2022): Historia de la Derecha Española. De la Ilustración a la actualidad (1789-2022). Madrid: Espasa. 1080 pp. isbn: 978-84-670-6974-7.

María Gajate Bajo — 2025-01-02

Pinto Tortosa, Antonio J (2023): Una breve historia social del trabajo. Madrid: Ediciones Complutense. 254 pp. isbn: 978-84-669-3818-1.

Moisés Rodríguez Escobar — 2025-01-02

Book Review: "Bilbao. Desarrollo urbano y desigualdad en una ciudad industrial (1876-1936)"

Nuria Rodríguez Martín — 2024-12-27