Alumni Travel Reading 2018-2019: Trade Routes of Coastal Iberia

Robert Hughes’s book might be too long for some, but, besides covering the art and architecture, his area of expertise, Hughes provides an excellent explication of Barcelona’s history and culture.

A more succinct picture by Barcelona writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, heavier on politics and cultural nationalism.

Looks at the modernization of Barcelona in the wake of the Olympics.

A novel which takes place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This novel is about an exile’s return to the city.

A book set in the postwar city.

A widely praised novel set in medieval Barcelona.

No fictional detective has covered Barcelona more intensively or chronicled modern Spain more thoroughly than Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s sophisticated gastronome Pepe Carvalho. The 15 or so novels (most translated to English) feature food, sex, and politics. The author himself was a journalist, political activist and critic, who was imprisoned by the Franco dictatorship.

Stanley G. Payne, historian of Spain, especially the 20th century, provides a largely chronological survey of Spanish history combined with a discussion of major themes and topics.

This is a highly respected history in which scholars provide chapters on the time periods in which they specialize.

Livermore was a prolific historian of Iberia, especially Portugal. This is a lighter history, combining chapters organized chronologically with thematic chapters on such aspects of the Portuguese world as cities and regions, architecture, birds, music and wine.

This volume on the art and architecture of Andalucia includes illustrations of every piece of art described, supplementary regional and city maps and blueprints, inserts on related cultural and intellectual topics, illustrated timelines and explanations of architectural styles, and glossaries and terminology lists.

A look at Portugal's move from an authoritarian system to a democratic one as well as its integration into the European Union.

Fado, often described as 'urban folk music', emerged from the streets of Lisbon in the mid-nineteenth century and went on to become Portugal's 'national' music during the twentieth. It is known for its strong emphasis on loss, memory and nostalgia within its song texts, which often refer to absent people and places. One of the main lyrical themes of fado is the city itself. Fado music has played a significant role in the interlacing of mythology, history, memory and regionalism in Portugal in the second half of the twentieth century. Richard Elliott considers the ways in which fado songs bear witness to the city of Lisbon, in relation to the construction and maintenance of the local. Elliott explores the ways in which fado acts as a cultural product reaffirming local identity via recourse to social memory and an imagined community, while also providing a distinctive cultural export for the dissemination of a 'remembered Portugal' on the global stage.

Buck's tour of Lisbon brings in plenty of literary references and stories, including the 19th century Eça de Queirós, the Italian Antonio Tabucchi, José Saramago and, over and over, Fernando Pessoa.

"In 1925, Fernando Pessoa wrote a guidebook to Lisbon for English-speaking visitors, and wrote it in English. The typescript was only discovered amongst his papers long after his death...it shows us Pessoa's view of his native city - and Pessoa, as an adult, rarely left Lisbon, and it figures large in his poetry. The book can still be useful to visitors today, given that the majority of the sights described are still to be found."

Wilson's crime stories have settings in Benin and Seville, as well as Lisbon. Here Inspector Ze Coelho investigates a murder in the 1990s that leads to unearthing a part of Portugal's fascist past.

This recently translated fiction by Portugal's Nobel Prize winning author, tells the story of life in 1940s Lisbon. The narration centers on the intertwining lives of the inhabitants of a block of apartments shortly after the world war, showcasing the political turmoil