This article examines the cultural trajectory of Joana Massissa, the widow of a miller from Castell & oacute; d'Emp & uacute;ries who, according to her statement in the judicial proceedings, was abducted in 1632 by the renowned banditJoan Sala i Ferrer, known as Serrallonga. Forced to accompany him under threat of death, she lived with him dressed as a man and took part in his criminal activities until their capture. Despite her historically secondary role and the scarcity of reliable information available, her figure became a recurring motif in chapbooks, balls parlats, plays, novels, and poems from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. These cultural productions reshaped and reconfigured her image according to the aesthetic, ideological, and political demands of each era: from her transformation into the noble Do & ntilde;a Juana Torrellas by Golden Age dramatists to her romantic and Catalanist reinterpretation in the work of Victor Balaguer, alongside other versions portraying her as loyal to the Spanish monarchy. The study analyses how, through this process, Massissa evolved from a marginal historical figure into an autonomous female myth of great symbolic plasticity, whose remembrance-sustained more by the literary and popular imagination than by documented reality-has taken deep root in the Catalan collective memory to the present day.
The digital sphere has redefined how memories-both individual and collective-are constructed. This article explores how digital technologies-from commemorative software to social media platforms-are transforming personal and collective memory. It examines the capacity of these media to generate fabricated personal memories (e.g., projects like Kodak's Memory Shots, which creates artificial images of nonexistent moments) and collective memories (e.g., platforms such as Wikipedia or the Instagram project @eva.stories). Findings reveal that while these tools democratize access to the past, they also introduce critical risks: historical distortion, dependence on algorithms that prioritize engagement over authenticity, and susceptibility to political manipulation (e.g., the instrumentalization of the Holocaust in Ukraine through generative AI). The article concludes with a call to develop ethical frameworks that safeguard the integrity of memory in the digital age, aiming to balance technological innovation with historical preservation.
Rafael Altamira (1866-1951) was one of the most outstanding and multifaceted intellectuals of the so-called Silver Age. His work has been studied from many different perspectives but has not received specific attention from an economic point of view. This perspective is relevant because Altamira's links with regenerationism and Krausism led him to take an interest in the modernization of the country from a reformist orientation and with special interest in social issues. The specific objective of this work is to show that Altamira's analysis of two important issues in his intellectual career, the << national character >> and institutions based on custom, had clear economic significance, as he ultimately sought to examine whether they could constitute an obstacle to the country's material progress. In this regard, he denied that the features of the << national character >> were incompatible with a modern economy, and he also defended the validity of economic institutions such as communal property or local irrigation water markets, anticipating some later approaches of institutional economics.
The Spartiate mirage, understood as a continuous phenomenon of distortion and even invention of the identity signs, customs and civic values of the citizens of ancient Sparta to turn them into models and references, shaped all Western thought. This work deals specifically with the reception and interpretation of the ancient paradigms, and particularly the Spartan paradigm, by philosophers, politicians, soldiers and intellectuals of different classes and conditions during the Age of Liberal Revolutions in old Europe and in the emerging United States of America. It is about studying the biased use, instrumentalization and even appropriation of these paradigms to serve certain interests. The early Roman Republic was, on the one hand, a clear reference, held up as a symbol of freedom and austerity in the face of despotism and corruption, while when looking at the Greek world the old Sparta-Athens dichotomy survives. We examine how and why it was the Spartan paradigm of citizenship that tended to prevail over that of an Athenian democracy that was perceived as
The Spanish Enlightenment figure Petra Pedregal published Pelayo, restaurador de la monarqu & iacute;a espa & ntilde;ola in 1828, a translation of the romantic historical novel P & eacute;lage; ou, Le fondateur de la monarchie espagnol, by Marn & eacute; de Morville, Madame de Rome, published in Paris in 1818. Pedregal may have wished to publicize her loyalty to King Ferdinand VII, since she came from a family of << afrancesados >> sympathetic to the ideals of the French Enlightenment. Pedregal added a prologue, a brief history of Spain, and a new conclusion to the novel. Pedregal was a member of the Women's Council of the Royal Madrid Economic Society and participated in their works of social utility, such as schools and orphanages. Through her active and valiant female characters who fight with their husbands and brothers against the Moors and propose pedagogical and philanthropic projects, Pedregal transforms the passive or treasonous roles of women in the legends associated with Pelayo. The male and female Spanish characters exalt the virtues of friendship and liberty. Pedregal contributes a secular interpretation of Covadonga as a site of memory for the creation of national Spanish identity. In her original conclusion, the translator offers a revision of Spanish ethnic identity by defending the Arab contribution to Spanish culture.
