International Journal of Iberian Studies - Volume 19, Issue 3, 2007

This article analyses three Spanish films made during the 1990's by three male filmmakers: Ay, Carmela (1990) by Carlos Saura, Land and Freedom, (1995) by Ken Loach and Libertarias, (1996) by Vicente Aranda. The three films are set during the Spanish Civil War and are concerned with the rewriting of recent Spanish history. The article focuses on the representation of female characters in these films. The three films echo the rapidly changing roles of women in Republican Spain in 193738 and they attempt to portray female characters as subjects and not objects. Nonetheless, this article argues that not all three films succeed in depicting women as discourse-mastering subjects: while Loach only uses the female characters as an instrument to document Spanish history, Aranda further places gender issues at the heart of his film. However, it is Saura who actually manages to represent a strong and independent female character as a subject with a discourse of her own.

The European Free Trade Association's Industrial Development Fund for Portugal completed its operations in 2002 after 25 years of contribution to the country's economic evolution. During this period, the Fund approved almost 1,750 preferential loans worth over 789 million euros, which in turn generated some 3 billion euros of overall investment. This article evaluates the role of the IDF by focussing upon the difficulties associated with creating jobs and developing the human resource base through vocational training schemes. It shows that the Fund's financial activity was spatially channelled mainly towards Portugal's western coastal margin, and remained biased in favour of the country's traditional manufacturing industries. It critiques the validity of such a focus on process and evaluates the spatial efficacy inherent in promoting a scheme that appears to work to the detriment of disadvantaged interior regions, instead of achieving its goal of equitably distributing funds throughout the country.

This article explores the relationship between language and identity in the context of post-war European migration as it relates to a group of Spaniards who settled permanently in Hampshire and Dorset between 1950 and 1974. Using oral history testimonies and data extracted from Spanish migrant periodicals published in the United Kingdom during the 1970s and early 1980s, the article focuses on the tension between the maintenance of the Spanish mother tongue and the acquisition of English, the majority language of the host country, arguing that a considerable language shift towards English has taken place, which may only now begin to be reversed given the increasing popularity that the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures are currently enjoying in Anglo-speaking cultural contexts.

The Spanish Civil War was a ferocious ideological fight between Republicans and Nationalists during which cinema was used as political propaganda. The diversity of film centres during the conflict produced a wide variety of points of view and ideological or strategic proposals. Jean-Paul Le Chanois directed Un peuple attend (1939), a documentary that showed images of exiled Spanish republicans living in appalling conditions in the refugee camps in Argels. Part of this material is contained in REFUGE (1939), a documentary edited by Irving Lerner. Testimony to the cruelty of the Spanish Civil War, the film was produced by Cin-Libert and the Medical Bureau and the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. A documentary film in the Filmoteca Espaola classified as A People Is Waiting (sic) may in fact be Refuge.

The Quest for Survival after Franco. Moderate Francoism and the Slow Journey to the Polls, 19641977, Cristina Palomares (2004) Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 271 pp., ISBN 1-84519-123-8 (pbk), 17.95

Configuring Community: Theories, Narratives and Practices of Community Identities in Contemporary Spain, Parvati Nair (2004) London: Modern Languages Research Association, 196 pp., ISBN 1 904350 14 3 (pbk), 35.00

Financial Developments in National and International Markets, Philip Arestis, Jesus Ferreiro and Felipe Serrano (eds.) (2006) Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, 244 pp., ISBN 13:978-1-4039-9629-9 (hbk), 58

Gendering Spanish Democracy, Monica Threlfall, Christine Cousins and Celia Valiente (2005) London: Routledge, 239 pp., ISBN 0-415 34794-7 (hbk), 80