Historias: The Spanish History Podcast

From streaming music to Tictok videos to podcasts, recorded sound is ubiquitous in our lives, but few of us give much thought to how it all started. In this episode, we’re joined by Eva Moreda Rodríguez, a reader in music at the University of Glasgow, to do just that. We follow the origins of the recording all the way back to Edison’s first phonograph, tracing its path in Spain through scientific demonstrations, traveling fairs and early recording studios. Along the way, we’ll have a chance to listen to some of these early recordings and discuss both the reactions people had to them at the time and our impressions of them today.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel on medieval Spanish literature. This story was told and retold throughout the ancient in medieval worlds. In medieval Iberia, it formed an important backdrop to the composition of historical narratives and often served as a model for their accounts of disputes between kings and members of the royal family. Along with our exploration of the story of Cain and Abel, we will also explore some of the ways that digital tools can help us to better understand and think about some of the big topics in the study of medieval Iberia. In particular, we will discuss Dr. Peña Fernández’s new digital project focusing on Alfonso X’s General estoria and some of the new insights offered by the project.

Any visitor to Spain today will be familiar with the Cortes Inglés department store as the anchor of Spanish commercial cityscape. But how did department stores take hold in Spain and what there the political implications of their rise? In this episode, Alejandro Gómez del Moral tells their story in the context of Spain’s turbulent early-twentieth century and long Francoist dictatorship. In Part I, we examine how department stores thrived even within the restrictive culture of the dictatorship.

Any visitor to Spain today will be familiar with the Cortes Inglés department store as the anchor of Spanish commercial cityscape. But how did department stores take hold in Spain and what there the political implications of their rise? In this episode, Alejandro Gómez del Moral tells their story in the context of Spain’s turbulent early-twentieth century and long Francoist dictatorship. In Part II, we discuss to what extent the rise of consumer culture contributed to the undermining of the dictatorial regime.

Between the removal of Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen and the new Law of Democratic Memory, the legacies of Spain’s recent past have been in the news a lot recently. But how much of the Franco dictatorship survives in Spanish politics and society today and in what forms? How can those hold overs be addressed? In Part II of this episode, Sebastiaan Faber discusses ideas about historical memory and how to address Franco’s legacies in Spain in a transnational context.

Between the removal of Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen and the new Law of Democratic Memory, the legacies of Spain’s recent past have been in the news a lot recently. But how much of the Franco dictatorship survives in Spanish politics and society today and in what forms? How can those hold overs be addressed? In Part I of this episode, Prof. Sebastiaan Faber of Oberlin explores the legacies of Francoism in Spanish business, courts, politics and more.

In this episode, we discuss the intersection of chivalry and violence with Dr. Sam Claussen, with a focus on the chaotic Trastámara period of Castilian history (1369-1516). In examining chivalry, we find ourselves immersed in the bloody history of late medieval knights, grappling to understand the purposes of chivalric violence, their meanings and consequences. The destruction wrought by knights and nobles in late medieval Castile was closely tied to the ideas broadcast in chivalric writings and helped shape the course of Castile as it approached the early modern world and stood on the precipice of a European and global empire.

Although it declared an end to its armed activities in 2011, ETA remains one of the most controversial phenomena in the historical memory of Spain’s recent past. Often missing from these debates is discussion of the lives of ETA members themselves, who are usually portrayed as either terrorists or freedom fighters. In this episode, Nicolás Buckley traces the rise and fall of ETA, as seen through the eyes of seven ETA activists he interviewed. Along the way, we discuss such topics as their motivations, the violence they experienced from the Spanish state and their experiences in prison. We also touch on larger questions such as Spain’s democratization process, Spanish and Basque identity, the line between victims and perpetrators, and oral history methodology.

In this episode of Historias, we discuss the origins of the Crown of Aragon, the rise of James I as a conqueror, and his impact on the legal system not only within his kingdom, but throughout medieval Iberia. In particular, we explore the impact of the Vidal Mayor—the law code composed during his rule by Vidal de Canellas—within the Crown of Aragon with particular attention on how the law code helped determine the redistribution of land in Valencia following its conquest. With Belen Vicens.

In this episode, we first discuss the development of different vernaculars as literary languages during the Middle Ages. Then, we look at Petrarch and his influence on contemporary and later medieval authors. Finally, we discuss some of the ways that Petrarch’s ideas about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance not only influenced his contemporaries, but may have also helped to shape modern conceptions of the period as well as the development of “Medievalism” in popular culture.  With Leonardo Francalanci.