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Ghosts of Spain

di Giles Tremlett

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6362936,430 (3.94)53
The appearance, more than sixty years after the Spanish Civil War, of mass graves containing victims of Franco's death squads finally broke the unwritten understanding among Spaniards that their recent, painful past was best left unexplored. Madrid-based journalist and 20-year resident Tremlett embarked on a journey around the country and through its history to discover why its people have kept silent so long, and here unveils the tinderbox of disagreements that mark the country today. Delving into such 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. He also offers trenchant observations on Spanish life today, such as why Spaniards dislike authority figures, but are cowed by a doctor's white coat, and how women have embraced feminism without men noticing.--From publisher description.… (altro)
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    Guerra di Jason Webster (sanddancer)
    sanddancer: Both books look at reactions in modern day Spain to the Spanish Civil War.
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4.5 stars actually. I can’t give it 5 because couple of chapters were quite difficult to wade through. I finished the book in several takes, first two being botched by these unfortunate chapters. I mean I’m not interested in flamenco or construction boom and ensuing machinations. However even in these cases I learned something curious, for example about larger than life cult singer I’ve never heard of - Camarón de la Isla. I persevered and was ultimately rewarded with excellent insights which only keen eye of a totally submersed observer could detect and relay to reader. Chapter on Basque country provides enough information and narrative to save you from reading a whole book on this matter (in my case it was Mark Kurlansky’s one). Galicia and Catalonia chapters are really good too.

It is a good example of being rewarded for the effort of reading: you trudge through 1-2-3 chapters, wavering to give up and then “BANG”: half a page of valuable and absolutely fascinating information few of your friends ever heard of.
( )
  Den85 | Jan 3, 2024 |
Original hasty review:

A curious book, and not really the read I was expecting. Initially, it looked like I might get something *close* to what I expected, since Tremlett starts off by telling the reader how Spain is his adopted country and that he can't really envision living anywhere else. However, he then launches on tale after tale of how crowded, conflicted, noisy and ... well, from my point of view, kind-of-awful the place is. The prose is journalistic (which makes sense given that Tremlett is a journalist) and oddly colorless.

So while, naively, I expected something colorful and drenchy from a book with both "Ghosts" and "Spain" in the title, I'm not getting that at all. I decided to read this because I've had a growing interest in moving abroad, and had thought of Spain as a potential destination. Now, I'm not so sure.

If I was [more] cynical I would opine that perhaps this last effect was intentional, and that Tremlett is similar to some of the people he writes about here ... and that -- now that he's in-country -- he'd rather YOU didn't move to Spain and crowd it further.

I may update this when I'm done with the book.

UPDATE: I'm not done, but I'd still like to update this. My words above were rather premature. My mind was changed by what I thought was a brilliant chapter on Flamenco and a perhaps-even-better one on the Basque matter (even if this latter was, like some of the material I'd earlier complained about, kind of unpleasant). As I come to the end of the book I'm impressed with the range of things Tremlett covers, and with his even-handedness. ( )
  tungsten_peerts | Feb 3, 2022 |
Impressed me with its detail. ( )
  KittyCatrinCat | Aug 29, 2021 |
Although restricted by Tremlett's perspective, this book offers some insights into the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish part of my family and some of the rather surprising things I saw while visiting Spain a few years ago. It also offers a potentially cautionary parallel between Spain's identity crisis and that in the US, including a shared distrust of government and the media and a tendency to believe whatever we feel like regardless of facts. Upon finishing this book I'm left feeling both comforted and discouraged at the ways in which Spain is like the United States.

I appreciate that Tremlett writes about all corners of Spain even though his personal experience is primarily in Madrid and Barcelona. This can be a somewhat dry read at times, but it helped me to alternate between the paper book and the audiobook (and gave me a break from the comma overuse that seems common in certain British writing).

One disappointment during this book, though, was the discovery that the Castilian pronunciation of my last name is not as pleasant to my ear as the Latin American pronunciation. That Castilian "z"...it just doesn't sound right to me. Maybe it would grow on me if I lived there. ( )
1 vota ImperfectCJ | Dec 31, 2020 |
I admittedly haven't finished this book. When I first started it, I was very impressed with the author's understanding of Spanish history (in particular, the continuing trauma of the Spanish Civil War). I enthusiastically read the book up until about Chapter 6, when I became aware of the fact that the author's observations were dissolving into gross generalizations and blatant hyperbole -- which isn't to say that there isn't truth there. But the blanket characterizations of "the Spanish people" began to chafe me as a reader and student/professor of Spanish literature and culture, because if there is only one thing you learn when studying Spain, it is that the country is incredibly diverse and that generalizations never get you very far when attempting to understand "La(s) España(s)"

Unfortunate, it was, that the author failed to convince me, because a lot of the time, he does have very insightful things to say about Spain and its people. I guess journalism (i.e. sensationalism) got the best of him. ( )
1 vota voncookie | Jun 30, 2016 |
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The appearance, more than sixty years after the Spanish Civil War, of mass graves containing victims of Franco's death squads finally broke the unwritten understanding among Spaniards that their recent, painful past was best left unexplored. Madrid-based journalist and 20-year resident Tremlett embarked on a journey around the country and through its history to discover why its people have kept silent so long, and here unveils the tinderbox of disagreements that mark the country today. Delving into such 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. He also offers trenchant observations on Spanish life today, such as why Spaniards dislike authority figures, but are cowed by a doctor's white coat, and how women have embraced feminism without men noticing.--From publisher description.

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