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Begin New Search Political Geography Spain Publication Year within 25 Years

121. Lingering Borders in the European Union: Migrant Workers in Spain and the Netherlands

Author:
Andra Bosneag
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
With the two European Union (EU) Enlargements of 2004 and 2007, an understanding of the antiquated and modern challenges, fears, and contradictions surrounding the inclusion of accession countries, as well as the respective rights of the “old” member states, has become essential to any contemporary analysis of current EU dynamics. This work incorporates my two semesters abroad in Barcelona, Spain, and Maastricht, the Netherlands, with the intended approach of further clarifying the Program's mission: “intensive interrogation and observation of globalization in comparative perspective.” Before embarking on my study abroad, I was profoundly marked by an incident that solidified my resolution to study Eastern and Central Europe. In an effort to skip the bureaucratic visa process, I attempted to use my Romanian passport instead of my American passport to enter Europe. After inquiring at five different Spanish embassies as to whether my Romanian passport, after EU accession, would eliminate the need for a visa, I left the country still not knowing if my passport was yet functional in the realm of the European Union. Upon entering Spain, a border patrol officer enthusiastically informed me that the EU required no entry papers (besides a passport) for its citizens studying abroad; my Romanian passport had ceased to be just a sentimental souvenir. This incident was one of many that attested to the lack of general knowledge surrounding the new EU members and it contributed to my decision to study the interactions between the old and new member states. Furthermore, both Spain and the Netherlands have generally been viewed as “different.” While Franco's authoritarian regime emphasized the popular slogan, “España es diferente,” it is currently employed as a tactic to garner tourists. In contrast, the political and cultural dynamics of the Netherlands have traditionally been perceived as anomalous in their liberalism, compelling many to label the country as “different.”
Political Geography:
Europe, Spain, Netherlands, and Barcelona

122. Adrift in Madrid

Author:
Rafael Bardaji
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Security Affairs
Institution:
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Abstract:
MADRID-Spain was attacked by Islamists on March 11, 2004, but the new government that emerged from the polls three days later never learned the right lessons from that massacre. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his Socialist government argued that Spain had been attacked because of its presence in Iraq and because of the conservative government's cooperation with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. Based on this notion, they concluded that by pulling out of Iraq and distancing itself from America, Spain could insulate itself from Islamic terrorism.
Topic:
Government, Islam, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Iraq, America, and Spain

123. Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience

Author:
Omar G. Encarnación
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
A key contention of the transitional justice movement is that the more comprehensive and vigorous the effort to bring justice to a departed authoritarian regime the better the democratizing outcome will be. This essay challenges this view with empirical evidence from the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, a sweeping policy of purges intended to cleanse the state and society of the authoritarian past nearly derailed the transition to democracy by descending into a veritable witch-hunt. In Spain, by contrast, letting bygones be bygones, became a foundation for democratic consolidation. These counter-intuitive examples suggest that there is no pre-ordained outcome to transitional justice, and that confronting an evil past is neither a requirement nor a pre-condition for democratization. This is primarily because the principal factors driving the impulse toward justice against the old regime are political rather than ethical or moral. In Portugal, the rise of transitional justice mirrored the anarchic politics of the revolution that lunched the transition to democracy. In Spain, the absence of transitional justice reflected the pragmatism of a democratic transition anchored on compromise and consensus.
Topic:
Human Rights, Politics, International Affairs, and Law
Political Geography:
Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Iberia Peninsula

124. The “Perfidious Invasion” of 1808: Ideological Disquiet and Certainty in Moratín

Author:
Jes´us P´erez Magall´on
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper revisits the afrancesados' role in Spanish historiography as well as their political positioning prior to, during and after the French invasion of 1808. Taking the famous playwright Leandro Fern´andez de Morat´ın as a case study, the paper explores his political ideas beyond established labels such as “supporter of enlightened despotism” coined by S´anchez Agesta. To this end the article reviews a variety of Morat´ın's texts, including Carta de un vecino de Foncarral a un abogado de Madrid sobre el libre comercio de los huevos, Apuntaciones sueltas de Inglaterra, Viaje a Italia, a Prologue to Isla's Fray Gerundio de Campazas, as well as Morat´ın's correspondence. The essay argues that despite his confessed social, economic and even political liberalism, Morat´ın never supported any specific form of political organization, neither absolutist nor liberal. His open skepticism locates him beyond prevailing ideologies.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Spain

125. Mexican Silver for the Cortes of Cadiz during the War against Napoleon, 1808-1811

Author:
Carlos Marichal Salinas
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
In this essay attention is focused on the persistence of colonial loyalties despite the profound crisis at the center of the Spanish monarchy as a result of the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula. One clear indicator of colonial support can be found in the review of the numerous loans and donations collected in colonial Mexico for the purpose of assisting the patriot forces in Spain in their struggle against Napoleon. The financial contributions were considerable. Between late 1808 and early 1811, over 25 million pesos in tax monies, loans and donations were sent from New Spain to C´adiz, principal seat of patriot resistance in southern Spain.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Spain, Mexico, and Iberia Peninsula

126. Slavery, Science, and the end of the Old Regime in the Luso-Brazilian Empire

Author:
Kirsten Schultz
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper provides a preliminary examination of some of the late eighteenthcentury bases for the reception of liberalism and debates on slavery, specifically the Luso-Brazilian engagement with natural science and the work of the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences. The Academy's work most directly concerned with the question of slavery and the slave trade appealed to economic principles of utility, efficiency and productivity to identify ways to reform the practice of enslaving Africans in the interest of increasing the wealth generated within the colonial and imperial economies. Thus, even as slavery was being assailed internationally on both philosophical and religious grounds, Luso-Brazilian Academic writing insisted it was an economic rather than moral problem. At the same time, however, Academic inquiries into the question of human difference often undercut claims about Africans that were invoked elsewhere in the Atlantic world to justify the perpetuation of slavery and the slave trade. As Academic reformism thus grappled with the humanity of Africans, civilization and barbarism emerged as privileged categories of analysis for discerning the future of slavery, reasserting the moral dimensions of the institution.
Topic:
Human Rights and History
Political Geography:
Europe, Brazil, South America, and Spain

127. Staging the Revolution(s)

Author:
David T. Gies
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Spanish playwrights in the period between the French Revolution and the Spanish War of Independence became increasingly sensitized to militarization and conflict. Manuel José Quintana's ground-breaking Pelayo (1805) drew on tropes from Spain's historical past to discuss current and coming events. A new reading of Quintana's play suggests that he, among others, marked this rapidly changing cultural and political milieu with works that projected a growing nationalism and defense of Spain against the threats from north of the Pyrenees.
Topic:
Civil Society, War, History, and Arts
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Spain

128. Forging Catholic National Identities in the Transatlantic Spanish Monarchy, 1808-1814

Author:
Scott Eastman
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
By 1810, with the convening of the Cortes of Cádiz, the opening of the public sphere and war threatening to tear apart the monarchy, Spaniards began to forge a new national identity and an inclusive transatlantic nation. The common cultural idiom of religion and the language of national sovereignty provided a unifying symbolic repertoire for Spanish national identities during the transition from the Old Regime to liberal ascendancy. Yet American independence severed the ties of a transatlantic Spanish monarchy and an inclusive national identity as prescribed in the Constitution of 1812. The Virgin of Guadalupe, which had been appropriated by royalists as well as insurgents during the War of Independence in New Spain, soon emerged as the symbolic image of the Mexican nation. Religious imagery that had served to unite Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic fragmented into regional identifications in the Americas, and Spain itself emerged as a sovereign nation that had broken with the Old Regime.
Topic:
Nationalism, Religion, and History
Political Geography:
America, Europe, Spain, and Mexico

129. Beyond the RMA: Survival Strategies for Small Defense Economies

Author:
Ron Matthews and Curie Maharani
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Life was straightforward during the Cold War. There were the big guys in the bi-polar strategic stand-off—the United States and the Soviet Union—and there were the little guys: the Eastern European countries, such as Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia; Chile in Latin America; Spain in Southern Europe; Sweden in Scandinavia; Israel in the Middle East; and Singapore in the Far East. All these countries, big or small, capitalist or communist, possessed comprehensive and diversified defense industrial bases. However, times have changed, and in some senses they have changed dramatically. More than anything else, economics does not favor small countries. Previously, Cold War doctrine was premised on mass formations of artillery, main battle groups of tanks and combat aircraft located on the Central European front. In the twenty-first century, these formations have disappeared. Militaries have been transformed by the need to respond to new, emerging, asymmetrical threats arising anywhere across the globe, a shift that is captured under the umbrella term of the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA). Contemporary doctrine focuses on high-intensity warfare, characterized by sophisticated defense systems, such as telemetry and cruise missiles, fiber optic technologies, sensors, modern telecommunication systems, “stealth” coatings of modern weapon platforms, light-weight composite materials, and the miniaturization of technologies in, for instance, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, Poland, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latin America, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, Chile, and Scandinavia

130. Information Operations during Counterinsurgency Operations: Essential Option for a Limited Response

Author:
Raimundo Rodríguez Roca
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Athena Intelligence Journal
Institution:
Athena Intelligence
Abstract:
The importance of Information in the XXI century has become a fact that nobody can deny. The relevant role of the Information in societies can be observed as well during the development of conflicts where western forces participate. That is one of the reasons why controlling information flow arises as a significant requirement. The purpose of this article is to present a theory of operational and tactical information operations (IO) employment, as limited and non-lethal effects during counterinsurgency operations (COIN), with an important role to support area control. Firstly, this study will mainly focus on four integrating elements of IO: psychological operations (PSYOPS), civil-military operations (CMO), public affairs (PA) and computer network operations (CNO). Secondly, a practical case of IO execution will be simulated and a concept of operation will be developed. It should be noted that the approach presented herein is from a Spanish Army perspective. As we will appreciate in this article, the knowledge and managing of IO and the employment of CNO as a tool to empower PSYOPS, CMO and PA activities is of extreme significance and it will become essential to understand and to face the scenes of future conflicts and new wars.
Topic:
Defense Policy
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain