This essay examines the configuration of spiritual and intellectual boundaries between the Spanish colonizers and Philippine natives in the short story, "El talisay" (The Umbrella Tree), written by Spanish-Philippine author, Adelina Gurrea Monasterio (1896-1971), in the mid-twentieth century. Originally omitted from her fantastical, semi-autobiographical tales, Cuentos de Juana in 1943, the story interweaves native supernatural beliefs and Catholic dogma to illuminate the continual workings - both visible and invisible - of religious and cultural hybridity at the turn of the century. I explore the varying native reception of colonial missionaries and Catholic teachings with reference to a postcolonial and historical framework drawing on Homi Bhabha and Ann Stoler. I argue that Gurrea's reflections mirror the lasting influence of Catholic religious beliefs and institutional practices beyond the nation's complex transition from Spanish to American colonial administration.
This article examines the paradoxical status of eight Afro-Iberian musicians at the court of Philip IV of Spain. Documented from 1657 onwards, these men occupied a hybrid position: though referred to in archival sources as enslaved, they were afforded the markers of professional artists, including specialized training, royal patronage and financial provision. Drawing on fragmentary archival evidence and methodological frameworks from Saidiya Hartman and Miguel Valerio, this article argues that these musicians leveraged their artistry to navigate the constraints of enslavement. Their trajectory, culminating in a negotiated manumission, reveals music as a crucial tool for asserting agency and attaining freedom. By situating this case within broader courtly and diasporic musical cultures, this study challenges conventional narratives of Black professional life in the period. Ultimately, this study contributes to the cultural history of the African diaspora by foregrounding early modern music not merely as a form of entertainment, but as a critical arena for the negotiation of status, freedom and identity.
This article explores the construction of artistic authorship under Francoism through the case of Mar & iacute;a Paz Jim & eacute;nez (1909-1975), a pioneering Spanish abstract painter whose work and career have been largely excluded from hegemonic Spanish and Basque art historical narratives. Rather than treating Jim & eacute;nez as an exception, the article approaches her trajectory as an opportunity to reshape a new historiography, offering a broader understanding of the artistic field of the time and providing a framework to rethink the canon of the artistic period. Drawing on a fragmented and hybrid archive, the study adopts a feminist and cultural studies methodology that conceives the archive as a relational whole. This approach allows for an analysis of how class, gender and ethnicity intersected in the artist's habitus and shaped her strategies of self-presentation, negotiation and agency within her cultural system. Particular attention is paid to the role of affect, sociability and performativity in Jim & eacute;nez's navigation of different artistic and institutional contexts, as well as to the ways in which her Romani identity appears, is camouflaged or strategically mobilized across visual and textual materials. By reading these archival materials as parts of a "subject", the paper argues that practices often considered private are inherently political for the construction of artistic identity.
Este art & iacute;culo examinar & aacute;, en primer lugar, c & oacute;mo utiliza Almudena Grandes los desplazamientos y las interacciones urbanas del protagonista en su novela Los pacientes del doctor Garc & iacute;a (2017) para ilustrar el contexto sociopol & iacute;tico espa & ntilde;ol de posguerra, en especial las estrategias de supervivencia ante las pr & aacute;cticas represivas ejercidas por y sobre las y los madrile & ntilde;os. Se plantear & aacute; que la capital, en cuanto microcosmos nacional, refleja las heridas f & iacute;sicas y emocionales de una violencia sist & eacute;mica que la transform & oacute; de n & uacute;cleo de la resistencia al fascismo entre 1936 y 1939 en emblema de "la nueva Espa & ntilde;a". En esta l & iacute;nea, se buscar & aacute; determinar de qu & eacute; manera y con qu & eacute; implicaciones, la contraposici & oacute;n entre vencedores y vencidos se subraya en el espacio mediante las tensiones entre lo p & uacute;blico y lo privado, el centro y la periferia, la palabra y el silencio o lo visible y lo clandestino.
This study explores how music and dance functioned as embodied forms of resistance and identity formation among Converso and Morisco communities in the early modern Crown of Aragon. It argues that expressive practices such as singing, ritual dancing and festive celebration were not marginal cultural remnants but pivotal strategies for affirming communal memory, negotiating socioreligious identity and challenging hegemonic Christian norms. Focusing on rites of passage and major religious festivals, the study adopts a comparative and cross-cultural approach to demonstrate how these acts operated as counter-performances that subverted imposed religious uniformity and fostered transcultural practices. Drawing on a range of sources, including municipal decrees, royal edicts, theological treatises and inquisitorial records, the research highlights the everyday, gendered and ephemeral nature of cultural resistance. Women and musicians, in particular, emerge as key agents of ritual transmission and subaltern agency, sustaining ethnomusical performances that official discourse sought to erase. These expressive acts, often enacted in domestic or communal settings, transformed music and movement into powerful media of cultural continuity. Framing music as a cultural text embedded with dissent, the study shows how Aragonese crypto-Jewish and crypto-Muslim communities transformed embodied tradition into an instrument of resilience and defiance within a hostile religious landscape.
Este art & iacute;culo plantea c & oacute;mo en los a & ntilde;os setenta se produjo una coyuntura intelectual que coincide con un momento hist & oacute;rico de transformaciones en el campo literario postfranquista. Se pone el foco en la labor de Ana Mar & iacute;a Moix y su relaci & oacute;n con la revista Vindicaci & oacute;n Feminista, con el fin de proponer dos casos representativos de din & aacute;micas que estaban teniendo lugar en la prensa cultural espa & ntilde;ola de los setenta. Del rol de Moix en la prensa se pueden extraer valores literarios y pol & iacute;ticos, como se intenta demostrar con los ejemplos de Rosa Chacel y Felicidad Blanc, y se puede ampliar el conocimiento sobre la trayectoria de una de las escritoras m & aacute;s importantes del siglo veinte en Espa & ntilde;a.
Patricia Font's historical drama, El maestro que prometi & oacute; el mar (2023), focuses on the pedagogy of Antoni Benaiges (1903-1936), a Republican educator who served for two years at a school in rural Burgos prior to being assassinated just days after the Nationalist uprising in July 1936. Focused also on the efforts to recuperate the legacy of Benaiges, whose body was deposited in a mass grave and has never been identified, the film employs a dual timeline narrative, telling interconnected stories in the past and the present to shed light on pre-Civil War education and contemporary discourses and practices of historical memory in Spain. Benaiges embraced the pedagogical principles of C & eacute;lestin Freinet, who advocated the use of manual printing presses which students used to create their own publications. By conducting a close reading of the film alongside the historical record, this article posits that Benaiges was a transgressive pedagogue, one who challenged the status quo and ultimately paid with his life. The article ruminates on Benaiges's transgressive approach and use of Freinetian methods to argue that the film enhances our understanding of educational innovation in pre-Civil War Spain and the ongoing efforts to recuperate the memory of victims of Francoist violence.
Painted as a celebration of creativity, plurality and feminist subcultures, la Movida madrilena was central to the 1980s nostalgia which permeated the Spanish narrative fiction produced at the beginning of the new millennium. Luisa Castro's 2001 novel El secreto de la lejia recounts the lesser-represented experiences of a young Galician woman who moves to the Spanish capital to pursue a writing career during the Movida through an experimental, multigenre exploration of suffering and personal growth. This article shows how El secreto de la lejia unmasks dark realities of the Movida for the female outsider, contradicting interpretations of its universal social inclusivity. Through an intersectional feminist framework, it is argued that indicators of progress such as women's independence, literary production and cultural plurality remain acutely subjected to discourses of power as the protagonist navigates the threatening atmosphere of elite artistic spaces at the cost of her own wellbeing. Castro's novel fundamentally disrupts the mythologization of the Movida's spirit of progress from a minoritized perspective, revealing the instability of the period and the enduring influence of heteropatriarchal power structures in Spain's nascent democracy.
