Showing results for "unabridged" in Spain

Al igual que otros países, España ha vivido a lo largo de su historia luchas fratricidas, pero solo la que comenzó el 18 de julio de 1936 es recordada como la Guerra Civil por antonomasia. Ese conflicto fue total pues movilizó todo tipo de recursos como quizá nunca hasta entonces: desde los económicos, sociales y políticos, hasta los ideológicos, culturales y diplomáticos, y, por supuesto, los militares. La Guerra Civil.

Europe is an astonishingly successful place. In this dazzling new history, best-selling author Simon Jenkins grippingly tells the story of its evolution from warring peoples to peace, wealth and freedom - a story that twists and turns from Greece and Rome, through the Dark Ages, the Reformation and the French Revolution, to the Second World War and up to the present day. Jenkins takes in leaders from Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc to Wellington and Angela Merkel as well as cultural figures from Aristotle to Shakespeare and Picasso.

La Inquisición española fue una mezcla de agencia de espionaje, unidad de asuntos internos y fuerza de orden público que, aunque tuviera como objetivo prioritario la persecución de delitos religiosos, acabó convirtiéndose –y esta es una de las sorpresas mayúsculas de este libro– en un brazo «político» de la monarquía hispánica, realizando una labor de vigilancia global, con intervenciones quirúrgicas.

Por primera vez un volumen reúne la historia de España escrita por Arturo Pérez-Reverte durante más de cuatro años en su columna «Patente de corso» del XL Semanal. Un relato ameno, personal, a ratos irónico, pero siempre único, de nuestra accidentada historia a través de los siglos. Una obra concebida por el autor para, en palabras suyas, «divertirme, releer y disfrutar; un pretexto para mirar atrás desde los tiempos remotos hasta el presente, reflexionar un poco sobre ello y contarlo por escrito de una manera poco ortodoxa.»

The conquistadores, the early explorers and settlers of Spanish America, have become the stuff of legends and nightmares. In their own time, they were glorified as heroic adventurers, spreading Christian culture and helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. Today, they stand condemned for their cruelty and exploitation as men who decimated the ancient civilisations of the Aztecs and the Incas and carried out horrific atrocities in their pursuit of gold and glory.

The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism. The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry for a generation. Over 35,000 volunteers from 61 countries around the world came to defend democracy against the troops of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. Ill-equipped and disorderly, yet fuelled by a shared sense of purpose and potential glory, disparate groups of idealistic young men and women banded together to form a volunteer army.

Amid the many catastrophes of the 20th century, the Spanish Civil War continues to exert a particular fascination among history buffs and the layperson alike. This Very Short Introduction integrates the political, social, and cultural history of the Spanish Civil War. It sets out the domestic and international context of the war for a general audience. In addition to tracing the course of war, the book locates the war's origins in the cumulative social and cultural anxieties provoked by a process of rapid, uneven, and accelerating modernism taking place all over Europe.

The Spanish military coup of 1936 was launched to overturn the social and economic reforms of the democratic Second Republic, and its educational and cultural challenges to the established order. The consequent civil war was fought in the interests of the landowners, industrialists, bankers, clerics and army officers whose privileges were threatened. However, a central justification for a war that took the lives of around 500,000 Spaniards was that it was being fought to combat an alleged scheme for world domination by a non-existent ‘Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik Conspiracy’.

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

Un recorrido apasionante y documentado por la huella vasca en el descubrimiento, la conquista y la civilización de América: desde las motivaciones, cartas y disputas intelectuales en torno a Colón hasta la participación crucial de marinos, pilotos y constructores navales de Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa y Álava en las expediciones clave del siglo XV y XVI. Con fuentes de primera mano y crónicas coetáneas, la obra ilumina episodios fundacionales (la travesía de 1492, la colonia Navidad, el papel de Juan de la Cosa y los Pinzón, las rutas del Atlántico Norte, la cartografía, los pleitos colombinos).

En el septuagésimo aniversario del estallido del trágico conflicto español, Paul Preston, hispanista de prestigio internacional, actualizó y amplió su estudio de la Guerra Civil teniendo en cuenta tanto las últimas investigaciones y polémicas historiográficas como abundante material inédito, ofreciendo su versión definitiva de La guerra civil española.

The vivid memoirs of Heinrich von Brandt, a young law student swept up in Napoleon's reshaping of Europe and dispatched to Spain with the Vistula Legion of the newly formed Duchy of Warsaw. Brandt becomes an officer of the voltigeurs, light infantry who were used to skirmish, patrol, screen battlefield movements, and engage the guerrilla insurgency. He fought battles at Tudela, Santa Maria, and Valencia, as well as sieges at Zaragoza and Tortosa, and participated in numerous smaller engagements, earning the French Légion d’honneur and the Polish Order of Virtuti Militari.

In February 1981, just as Spain was finally leaving Franco's dictatorship and during the first democratic vote in parliament for a new prime minister - Colonel Tejero and a band of right-wing soldiers burst into the Spanish parliament and began firing shots. Only three members of Congress defied the incursion and did not dive for cover: Adolfo Suarez, the then-outgoing prime minister, who had steered the country away from the Franco era; Guttierez Mellado, a conservative general who had loyally served democracy; and Santiago Carillo, the head of the Communist Party.

Spain's position on Europe's southwestern corner has exposed it to cultural, political and actual winds blowing from all quadrants. Africa lies a mere nine miles to the south. The Mediterranean connects it to the civilisational currents of Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians and Byzantines as well as the Arabic lands of the Near East. Hordes from the Russian steppes were amongst the first to arrive. They would be followed by Visigoths, Arabs, Napoleonic armies and many more invaders and immigrants.

Spain's transition to democracy after Franco's long dictatorship was widely hailed as a success, ushering in three decades of unprecedented progress and prosperity. Yet over the past decade, its political consensus has been under severe strain. A stable two-party system has splintered, with disruptive new parties on the far left and far right. No government has had a majority since 2015. Michael Reid overturns the stereotypical view of Spain as a country haunted by its Francoist past.

In 1474, a 23-year-old woman ascended the throne of Castile, the largest and strongest kingdom in Spain. Ahead of her lay the considerable challenge not only of being a young female ruler in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world but also of reforming a major European kingdom that was riddled with crime, corruption, and violent political factionism. Her pivotal reign was long and transformative, uniting Spain and setting the stage for its golden era of global dominance.

An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history.

Orwell chronicled his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies.

Despite being relatively brief, this very listenable history covers environmental, political, social, economic, cultural and artistic elements and is very open to regional variations and to the extent that the history of the peninsula and of its political groupings was far from inevitable. Its tone is accessible, supported by supplemental information, and is perfect for travellers to Spain.

Mit feinem Gespür für historische Dramatik und psychologische Tiefe zeichnet Stefan Zweig das Porträt eines der kühnsten Entdecker der Menschheitsgeschichte: Ferdinand Magellan. In einer Zeit, in der die Welt noch voller weißer Flecken war, wagt Magellan das scheinbar Unmögliche – die erste Weltumsegelung. Doch Zweigs Biografie ist weit mehr als ein Abenteuerbericht. Sie ist eine literarische Hommage an den unbeirrbaren Willen, die visionäre Kraft und das stille Heldentum eines Mannes, der gegen Widerstände, Intrigen und Naturgewalten kämpft, um eine Idee zu verwirklichen.