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Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past
by Giles Tremlett
The appearance, more than sixty years after the Spanish Civil War ended, of mass graves containing victims of Francisco Franco's death squads finally broke what Spaniards call "the pact of forgetting"―the unwritten understanding that their recent, painful past was best left unexplored.
At this charged moment, Giles Tremlett embarked on a journey around the country and through its history to discover why some of Europe's most voluble people have kept silent so long.
Ghosts of Spain is the fascinating result of that journey. In elegant and passionate prose, Tremlett unveils the tinderbox of disagreements that mark the country today. Delving into such emotional questions as who caused the Civil War, why Basque terrorists kill, why Catalans hate Madrid, and whether the Islamist bombers who killed 190 people in 2004 dreamed of a return to Spain's Moorish past, Tremlett finds the ghosts of the past everywhere. At the same time, he offers trenchant observations on more quotidian aspects of Spanish life today: the reasons, for example, Spaniards dislike authority figures, but are cowed by a doctor's white coat, and how women have embraced feminism without men noticing.
Drawing on the author's twenty years of experience living in Spain, Ghosts of Spain is a revelatory book about one of Europe's most exciting countries.
What are you reading this week? (6/26/025)
I currently listening to The Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett about how the Spanish Civil War and Franco's death squads shaped the country; and Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister.
-Vivian_H
"Mr. Tremlett['s]...affectionate yet critical intimacy with the country helps to make this book much more than an ordinary journalistic survey….Extended residency has...allowed Mr. Tremlett to gather off-beat stories distinctly revealing of his adopted land." ―Wall Street Journal
"[A] provocative and vividly written book that is part history, part political and social commentary, and part love letter….This book should be in all public and academic library collections on Spanish history and culture." ―Library Journal
This information about Ghosts of Spain was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Giles Tremlett is the Guardian's Madrid correspondent. He has lived in, and written about, Spain for the past twenty years.
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