Ana Corbalán

Ellen Mayock

This collection of essays explores cultural phenomena that are shaping global identities in contemporary Spain. This volume is comprised of twenty essays that examine literary, documentary, and film representations of the multicultural configurations of Spain. All of the essays treat multiculturalism in Spain, focusing on reconfigured Spanish cities and neighborhoods through Latin American, African, and/or Eastern European migrations and cultures. Principal themes of the volume include urban space and access to resources, responses to the economic crisis, emerging family portraits, public versus private spaces, the local and the global, marginalities, migrations, and public expression of human and civil rights. This project examines the intercultural exchange that takes place in recent productions against an imaginary homogeneous Spanish national identity. These films, documentaries, and narratives seek to unsettle the Spanish preconceptions of the “Other(s).” Therefore, these texts construct a hybrid concept of the nation in which perceived national identities can be altered by interactions with other cultures from a broader world. The originality of the work lies in its focus on contemporary Spanish literature, documentaries, and fictional film to foment exploration of how Spanish cities, big and small, are experiencing transformation in architecture, popular customs and festivals, economics, family dynamics, and social and political agency through the arrival of new residents from across the globe. Some of the essays question the very legitimacy of the term ‘multiculturalism,’ others examine the formation of new communities, and still others explore the changes in religious representations and the environmental effects of the tourist industry. Together, the essays offer a compelling portrait of the changing face of contemporary Spain.

Local Cities, Global Spaces

Toward a Multicultural Configuration of Spain

Lorraine Ryan

This collection of essays explores cultural phenomena that are shaping masculine identities in contemporary Spain, asking and striving to answer these compelling questions: what does it mean to be a man in present-day Spain? How has masculinity evolved since Franco's dictatorship? What are the dynamics of masculinity in contemporary Spanish culture? How has hegemonic masculinity been contested in cultural productions? This volume is comprised of sixteen essays that address these very questions by examining literary, cultural and film representations of the configurations of masculinities in contemporary Spain. Divided into three thematic units, starting with the undermining of the monolithic Francoist archetype of masculinity, continuing with the reformulation of hegemonic masculinity and finishing with regional emergent masculinities, all of the volumes essays focus on the redefinition of Spanish masculinities. Principal themes of the volume include alternative families, queer masculinities, performative masculinities, memory and resistance to hegemonic discourses of manliness, violence and emotions, public versus private masculinities, regional masculinities, and marginal masculinities. This exploration not only produces new insights into masculinity, but also yields nuanced insights into the recuperation of memory in contemporary Spain, the reconfiguration of the family, the status of women in Spanish society, and regional identities.

Ana Corbalán

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