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Ghosts of Spain
Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past | Giles Tremlett
12 posts | 5 read | 7 to read
An eloquent odyssey through Spain's dark history journeys into the heart of the Spanish Civil War to examine the causes and consequences of a painful recent past, as well as its repercussions in terms of the discovery of mass graves containing victims of Franco's death squads and the lives of modern-day Spaniards. Reprint.
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charl08
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Birth and death rituals in different places fascinating.

"The routine of death in Madrid [is a] well-trodden path. The dead are carted off to the the city's official morgue. ....Beautified by morticians, they are laid out... and put on public display so friends and family can make a final, posthumous visit ...with vigils going on for up to twenty-six dead, all neatly arranged in adjoining cubicles, the sanatorio bustles like a railway terminus.

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charl08
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The Civil War was also a bloodbath that pitted brother against brother and neighbour against neighbour. By the time the guns had stopped smoking and Franco had signed his final parte de guerra on 1 April 1939, some half a million Spaniards were dead. There are no exact figures, but it is thought that some 200,000 were executed by the two sides....

One in thirty Spanish men were dead.

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squirrelbrain
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We didn‘t study any Spanish history when I did my degree and I wanted to find out more about Franco‘s regime. Actually, there was only a chapter or two about that in this book, although many other aspects covered do link back to the Spanish ‘pact of forgetting‘.

In the end, the more political chapters were the least interesting; the sociological ones were fascinating, covering the Costas, flamenco, corruption, brothels, birth and death, et al.

Kimberlone A good historical fiction I‘ve read on this time period - the age of the characters leans toward YA but I don‘t think it has to read that way for an adult audience 2y
squirrelbrain I‘ve enjoyed other books by that author @Kimberlone so I‘ll look out for it - thank you! 2y
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ImperfectCJ
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Pickpick

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. ⬇️

ImperfectCJ 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 how Tremlett writes about all corners of Spain, although his own experience is mostly based in Madrid and Barcelona. This is a somewhat dry read at times, but it helped to alternate between the paper book and the audiobook. 3y
Texreader Awesome review. 3y
ImperfectCJ @Texreader Thank you. :-) I wasn't sure because I stayed up past my bedtime to finish the book and I'm never completely certain I'm coherent that late at night. 3y
ImperfectCJ 116 points for #MerryReaders (10 hours + TBR + post). #WinterGames @Clwojick 3y
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LauraAndTaraAndBooks
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Third Spain-themed non-fiction book in a row. Because obviously the time to realise I know precisely nothing about modern Spanish history is a mere two weeks before I start my MLang in Spanish and Linguistics...

AlaMich I‘m so envious! I did college and grad school all wrong; I should have done what you‘re doing. Further proof that college is wasted on the young, who often have no clue what they want to do with their lives! 5y
LauraAndTaraAndBooks @AlaMich tell me about it! I dropped out 8 years ago because I was pretty messed up, didn't care and uni was just a "box ticking" exercise, an item on the list of things I was supposed to do to be acceptable. I'm super lucky to have a second chance to go back, fully nerd out and do it right! What did you study? 5y
AlaMich @LauraAndTaraAndBooks Speech language pathology as an undergraduate, which I didn‘t like. Then I did get a masters in linguistics, but for the purpose of teaching English as a Second Language, which I did like. 5y
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AlaMich @LauraAndTaraAndBooks But I‘ve always loved studying languages and I have studied Spanish off and on for forever. I just could never figure out what I‘d do with an advanced degree in it. Do you have specific plans or are you doing it for the sheer love of it? 😊 5y
LauraAndTaraAndBooks Oof I imagine speech pathology is an awful lot of hardcore science! Teaching ESL sounds awesome though. Did you do it abroad? No concrete plans as of yet...although the ultimate dream would be to translate novels. Couldn't imagine much better than being paid to read and spread an author's words and ideas across linguistic and cultural boundaries 😊 5y
LauraAndTaraAndBooks @AlaMich ☝️☝️☝️ 5y
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