Alumni Travel Reading 2018-2019: Flavors of Catalonia

Eaude's is an entertaining cultural and literary history that has the particular virtue of covering the hinterlands at least as well as it does Barcelona.

Politics and history through the story of FC Barcelona, or Barça, the world's biggest football club.

35 experts explore Catalonia's history, economics, politics, language, and culture, in order to explain the region to the rest of the world.

"[Raphael Minder] looks at how and why Catalan separatism reached the top of Spain's political agenda, as well as its connection to the broader European malaise generated by flawed political responses to financial andother crises." Extensive reporting includes over fifty interviews with prominent Catalans.

The great English Hispanist J. H. Elliott provides the "first sustained comparative study [of] the similarities and the contrasts between the Scottish and Catalan experiences across a five-hundred-year period,"

For those interested in a broad comparative study, this "analysis of the propaganda of five Western European separatist parties" considers what the author views as the revolt of wealthier regions against their national states.

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.

George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia might not be the best guide to today’s Barcelona, but it shows what a city on the precipice of revolutionary change felt like. Like most of Orwell’s non-fiction it is powerful, direct prose.

Borrow it from your local library.

The Time Of The Doves is, in some respects, the canonic Catalan novel of the 20th century. Written in 1962 by exiled author Mercè Rodoreda, the novel traces a woman’s struggles through and after the Civil War.

It was made into a film in 1982 directed by Francesc Betriu under the title "La Plaza del Diamante" (the title of the original Catalan book is La plaça del diamante, which refers to the Barcelona location near where Rodoreda’s character lives).

Find it in your local library.

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

Find it in your local library.

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

Borrow it from your local library.

A book set in the postwar city.

Find it in a library near you.

A widely praised novel set in medieval Barcelona.

Find it in your local library.