Medieval Iberian literary tradition constitutes a vast corpus of writings with which to study interfaith relations – in particular, Christian attitudes towards Muslims. This thesis focuses on works produced in the thirteenth century under king Alfonso X of Castile-Leon. Scholars have often looked to Alfonso X's poetry and legal texts to explore Christian responses to Islam, at a pivotal moment of Christian domination in the Peninsula. The thesis looks to Alfonso's historiography (the Estoria de España), which has received much less attention from scholars of interfaith relations. This study employs a historical-critical method of interpretation to explore the transmission and reformulation of Christian society's attitudes towards Islam. It offers a sophisticated analysis of the narratives of three prominent figures in the history of Spanish Islam: a) the Prophet Muhammad, b) Ibn Abi Amir al-Mansur, and c) King al- Mamun of Toledo. The study reveals the wide-ranging and contrasting attitudes towards Muslims visible not only in the writings of Alfonso X, but throughout the broader historiography and literature of medieval Spain. The thesis explains how these contradictions are rooted in the paradoxes of conflict and co-operation among the faiths in the Peninsula. It concludes that the ambivalence of Christian writers allows for the coexistence of both disdain and respect for Muslims in medieval society.

This is a study of government and governance in the Audiencia of Santa Fe during the last two decades of Habsburg rule and the first two decades of Bourbon rule, a period largely neglected by historians of New Granada and of Spanish America in general. However, it is not simply an administrative history. Rather than focus primarily on the structure of government and formal mechanisms of power and authority, this study aims, as the title indicates, to examine the political activity contained within the formal structure of institutions and laws. It looks at the ways in which institutions of government actually functioned within the society they were designed to govern and control, in other words the workings of government. These are themes which have been little studied by historians of the region, despite the importance which has been attached to the colonial state as a force which played a primary role in shaping New Granada's history. Studies of the colonial state have tended to portray it as a hierarchy of institutions, closely controlled from the centre, which developed as Spain's monarchs sought to legitimise their dominion and impose their control over the vast territories of the Americas. They have presented royal institutions of government in the Indies, the audiencia and provincial governors in the case of New Granada as the tools of an absolutist monarchy, employed by the Spanish crown to expand royal power over Spanish American subjects. The present study thus aims to challenge this picture by making detailed reference to contemporary documentation and taking into account recent research on early modern government and governance in areas outside New Granada. We will attempt to show that government in the Audiencia of Santa Fe was not a rigid structure but very political in nature.

A marriage between the English Prince and the Spanish Infanta was deemed desirable following the signing of the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty in London in 1604. After several years of tortuous negotiations, the match failed in 1624 and England declared war on Spain the following year. This thesis addresses the end of the Anglo-Spanish Match negotiations in the period 1617-1624 by placing reasons for its failure in the global context of European diplomacy and dynastic politics in the early seventeenth century. Traditional historiography has considered the failure of the marriage diplomacy as the inevitable consequence of religious differences and cultural misunderstandings between England and Spain. Consequently, scholars have only looked within Europe when investigating the end of the union. My research, however, depicts a more composite picture not only by expanding the geographical boundaries of the investigation but also by demonstrating the extent to which new imperial rivalries played a much greater role in the marriage diplomacy than has previously been recognised. In the first chapter, I discuss the notion of reason of state in the relationship between England and Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century and I investigate the way in which the choice politically and/or economically most favourable was often taken regardless of religious considerations and increasingly in response to extra-European concerns. The body of the thesis is then dedicated to a few episodes when the imperial rivalry between England and the Iberian Peninsula influenced the end of the negotiations. In the second chapter, I look at Walter Raleigh’s second expedition to Guyana and the actions of the Spanish ambassador in London, Count of Gondomar, who asked that Raleigh should receive an exemplary punishment in order to maintain the marriage agreement after the English explorer had attacked Spanish settlements. In the following chapter, I move towards the East and analyse the taking of the Portuguese port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf by the English East India Company in 1622. In doing so, I outline the complex dynamics underlying the union of the Iberian crowns (1580-1640) as well as the specific repercussions of this episode on the Infanta’s dowry to be given by Spain to England. The fourth chapter introduces a further key player in both European diplomacy and the imperial rivalry between Spain and England, which is to say the Dutch. By looking at the ‘massacre’ at Amboyna in 1623, I prove that the rivalry with the Dutch in the Spice Islands, and especially the executions at Amboyna, initially pushed King James to pursue the marriage alliance with the Spanish Habsburgs with even greater commitment. In the last chapter, I look back at Europe to discuss how the two composite monarchies reacted to the arrival at their respective courts of the news of recent episodes of conflict in the West and East Indies. This concluding chapter argues that the awareness in Madrid and London of what had happened in the Indies put additional burdens onto the already deteriorating marriage negotiations and fundamentally contributed to their failure. Thus, the thesis sheds light on a well-known episode of Anglo-Spanish relations by observing it through a new lens. As a result, I improve our traditional understanding of the end of Anglo-Spanish Match as well as of global connectedness in the early seventeenth century.

This work is a study of the Catalan nationalist experience under the Franco regime, (1939-1975). Its aim is to account for the transformed status of Catalan nationalism at the dictatorship's end and explain the emergence of Convergencia i Unio (Convergence and Union), which since 1980 has become the political embodiment of Catalanism. Prior to 1939, with the achievement of the Catalan autonomy statute, Catalan nationalism had seemed to be embarked on a programme of the Catalanisation of society. In 1939, with Francoist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), it appeared certain that the Catalan nationalist movement would be crushed. Yet, this did not happen and it emerged in 1975 with more widespread social acceptance than ever before. This study is principally concerned with the relations between Catholicism and Catalanism. The Catalan Church had been involved in the Catalanist movement in the late nineteenth century but it became marginalised by the time of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-39). In 1936 the Catalan Church underwent a ferocious assault that included the execution of over 2,000 priests and members of religious orders. The victory of Spanish Nationalism in 1939 not only restored the Church, but gave it unprecedented power and influence over Catalan society. This new position in Catalan society gave the Church an opportunity to re-create Catalanism. This study argues that, for most of the Franco regime, Catalanism underwent a Catholicisation. Until the mid-1960s the only legally permitted Catalan-language publications were religious. Furthermore, Catholicism was greatly influential in civil society and in the re-formulation of Catalan culture. The origins of Convergencia i Unio are also to be found in the activities of the Catalan-nationalist business class. As will be seen, this sector was also transformed by the Franco dictatorship. No study in English or Catalan has examined Catalonia 1939-75 that has explained the emergence of the Catholic-influenced Convergencia i Unio or the changes that have taken place in Catalan culture and Catalanist ideology during this period.

Between 1810 and 1826 Spain lost most of her possessions in the Americas, and the inhabitants of Spanish America ceased to be subjects of the king, and became citizens of a series of new republics such as Mexico, Peru, Chile and Colombia. This thesis explores how the transition from colonial to republican rule was experienced by the inhabitants of the provinces of Santa Marta and Riohacha (Colombia), and the extent to which the transition implied a radical break with the colonial past. Santa Marta was among the most important royalist strongholds in the northern part of Spanish South America, and the thesis offers an interpretation of the much-neglected theme of Spanish American royalism during the independence period. It focuses on the social and 'ethnic' configuration of the provinces, and it discusses how different social/ 'ethnic' groups were constructed in the colonial period, how they responded and acted during the wars of independence and what the transition to republican rule implied for the make-up of nineteenth-century society. The analyses of late colonial and early republican society are done principally (but not exclusively) through a detailed discussion of marriage practices and patterns. The study is based primarily on archival sources from Spanish and Colombian depositories.

A hypothetical journey from the moment a soldier was wounded to his discharge from the field hospital was detailed in order to provide an idea of the organisation of military health services, evacuation strategy and roles of health care personnel during the Spanish Civil War. It was observed that despite both Nationalists and Republicans formally banning female nurses as part of the military units stationed on the front lines, nurses working at the auto-chirs, advanced surgical units and some field hospitals often found themselves only metres from the firing lines. Both men and women volunteered to nurse the war casualties from the start. It was soon observed, however, that untrained nursing staff could often cause more harm than benefit to patients, hence training courses for both nurses and orderlies were organised by a variety of organisations and political groups all over Spain. Due to the circumstances of war, nursing experienced a clear practical development expanding its professional boundaries from core to complex procedures which, until the outbreak of war, had been the sole responsibility of another professional group known as practicante. Nursing's unchallenged evolutionary process during the Spanish Civil War was explained by a number of factors including not only the war situation itself but the large number of nurses available, their determination, adaptability and capacity to evolve in order to meet the new health care needs of the population. The impact of key individuals such as Mercedes Mil, Inspector General of all Female Hospital Personnel, in the Nationalist side, and the nurses of the International Brigades, in the Republican side, on Spanish nursing was also significant. The evidence confirmed the hypothesis that the Civil War exerted a positive impact on Spanish nursing.

In a context characterised by the shift from fordism to post-fordism in the Iberian peninsula, this thesis addresses the following question how are capital, governments and social movements organised in the processes of integration and resistance that affect foreign immigration' in Barcelona and Lisbon? Thus, in the first chapter, an analysis of the concept of "integration" is undertaken in order to understand the complexities and elusiveness that hide behind it, giving special attention to immigrants' integration literature. A distinction between systemic integration and social integration is adopted, and thus in the second chapter recent theorisation on capital and the state (i. e. systemic institutions) is approached, while in the third chapter social movements and organisations are taken into account. In chapter four epistemological and methodological elements are noted. The last three chapters are devoted to analyse original fieldwork data (mainly qualitative interviews): chapter 6 analyses immigration governmental policies at European, 'national-state', 'national-regional', and local levels; chapter 7 studies social and capital organisations in Barcelona in relation to 'foreign immigration'; and in chapter 8 social and capital organisations are studied in relation to 'foreign immigration' in Lisbon. Finally, some conclusions are revealed whilst other questions are posed.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) and the Sack of Antwerp (1576), two of the most notorious massacres of the 1570s, were of international consequence in a confessionally-divided Europe. This thesis offers a comparative analysis of the Elizabethan political and print responses to both atrocities, evaluating to what extent and in what ways each shaped the increasingly Protestant political character of the period. It compares strands of argument aired by Elizabethan councillors, courtiers, military commanders and clerics, in contrast with the content of contemporary news pamphlets, to establish whether there was any overlap between the parameters of political debate and topical print. It investigates whether, and on what occasions, statesmen or figures associated with the court may have sought to confessionalise public opinion via the production of printed news. Analysing often overlooked printed sources, the thesis focuses on aspects of content and contexts of production. It considers the kinds of comment expressed on the massacres per se and in relation to: the nature of the wars in France and the Low Countries; Elizabeth’s foreign and domestic agendas; the compound significance of her gender, the unresolved succession and her realm's vulnerability to foreign invasion; and providential discourses concerning God’s favour and protection. These lines of enquiry throw up some insights into changing English attitudes towards the Catholic crowns of France and Spain and key figures abroad. Finally, the thesis reaches some broader conclusions regarding the development of an increasingly militant Anglo-Protestant nationalism in the mid-Elizabethan period.

On 11 September 1936 a Times editorial made reference to the 'clamourous partisanship' that had been brought about by the civil war in Spain. In literature since the war this polarisation of opinion has been central to representations of British responses to the conflict. Much attention has focused on the divergent British political responses, and particularly on those of the left, responses which became increasingly bitter as Spain became a 'distorting mirror in which Europe[could] see an exaggerated reflection of her own divisions'. Yet, as The Times editorial continued at the time, in spite of all 'incitements the great mass of public opinion (remained) firmly opposed to any taking of sides. This public resistance to the 'clamourous' efforts of supporters of the Republic or advocates of the Nationalists has been noted in subsequent literature but has not been explored in any depth, explanation generally centring around the policy of appeasement. While not ignoring such explanations, this study argues that the imagery and language employed in the various contemporary interpretations of events played a significant part in distancing events. The study, then, aims to add a cultural perspective to the more widely examined political understanding of British responses to Spain during the 1930s. Through an analysis of representations in mass culture, and through an examination of the experiences of the growing numbers of British visitors to the Peninsula, the study first seeks to identify the expectations of Spain and the Spanish people most commonly held in Britain of the 1930s. It then goes on to examine how, during the life of the Republic and especially throughout the Civil War, supporters of both sides, in every form of mass media available, repeatedly referred to this framework of preconceived notions as they endeavoured to interpret issues and events for their British audiences. Particular attention is given to differing portrayals of the Spanish political scene and the Catholic Church, to the representations of the two sides and what they reportedly stood for. Finally, by looking at reactions to events in the Basque provinces, examining responses to humanitarian aid appeals and once again assessing the attitudes found in fictional representations of the war the study offers some measure of the impact of the war on the wider British public.

This thesis explores, from a cultural perspective, the organisational change process resulting from a string of take-overs within Blazehard, a tyre manufacturing company in Spain. It looks at the effects of these changes in the way people reconstruct the organisation and their role as its employees through the stories they share. The first part of the thesis elaborates on the uses of culture as a conceptual tool for observing organisations and, especially, on the need to account for the complementary processes of continuity and change in social experience. The thesis proposes historical recollections, as cultural manifestations, as a vehicle that reproduces and challenges a cultural order through their reproduction and generation within that order. They articulate a space where the new and the uncertain can be made safe through their integration into the traditional and the known, thereby providing possibilities for permanence and security as well as for innovation. The research combines different methods of data gathering - interviews, documents and group discussions - and of analysis - narratives and discourses to facilitate the exploration of both the commonalties and the diverse interests and perspectives existing among Blazehard employees. The exploration of the stories shows how they compose a collectively reproduced narrative that guides -and therefore constrains- employees' historical recollections. This referential narrative is the vehicle through which people reproduce but also challenge their cultural order in the organisation. As such, storytelling is presented as the constant process of reformulation that opens possibilities for individual development within the cultural constraints that the organisation imposes on its members. The results suggest when people try to make sense of a change situation both turn to their own experiential resources and use the symbols that their cultural environment provides. It is in the tension between the two, that the conditions of fluidity and ambiguity required for a cultural transition can be created.