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Thesis--Sorbonne, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 765-[784]) and indexes.

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Quiet Little Animals is a novel set in early-1940s Spain. The story begins with a young couple, Carmen and Ernesto, who are expecting their first child. Carmen gives birth to their daughter Isadora in a Catholic hospital, but when she wakes up after the birth, she's told that the baby has died. However, the truth is that the baby was kidnapped by the nun Sor Eugenia, who decided that she would provide the baby with a better life by sending her away to be adopted by a more "proper" family - and a young religious woman named Ava finally gets the baby she's been trying for years to have, her little Maria. The story follows the four main point-of-view characters - Carmen, Ernesto, Sor Eugenia and Ava - as their lives move past that moment when Isadora/Maria was taken from one family and given to another. In addition to the four main points of view, there are also a number of chapters that are told in the form of fairy tales. The use of multiple points of view to tell one story allows each of the characters to have a known stake in the outcome of the narrative, and is a major stylistic interest of the piece. The central themes of the book are motherhood, grief, birth and death. It also asks questions about the creation of family, fate, and the aftermath of civil war.

At the moment of the founding of the Second Republic in April 1931, the labour movement in Spain was dominated by two organizations, namely the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). The Second Republic marked the first period in which the two organizations had concurrently operated openly since the Primo de Rivera dictatorship had made the CNT illegal at the same time as the UGT had agreed to cooperate with the General’s corporatist project. With the founding of the Republic, a long-standing organizational and ideological hostility between the two organizations was exacerbated by the fact of the UGT actively participating in the reform project of the Republican-socialist government and the CNT increasingly opposing that project. However, the Republic progressively became polarized between left and right; as fascist regimes came to the fore across Europe, increasingly large sectors of the Spanish left called for a unity of their forces to prevent a similar occurrence in Spain. The outbreak of the Civil War in July 1936 made this unity even more imperative. This thesis focuses on interactions between the CNT and the UGT between 1931 and 1936 within this socio-political context, primarily from the perspective of the CNT. The thesis traces and analyses the evolution of CNT as a national actor’s overall position on the UGT from one of outright hostility to a stance of proposing a revolutionary alliance with it in 1936. The thesis also examines interactions between the two organizations in Catalonia, which was both the CNT's birthplace and stronghold and a region in which the UGT had historically garnered little support. In addition to highlighting the pivotal role that the Catalan CNT had in determining the CNT's national-level stance on the UGT throughout this period, the thesis explores how the anarcho-syndicalist movement in the region presented its socialist counterpart as the embodiment of a socialist- and state-sponsored project to destroy the CNT, and also examines the largely hostile encounters between CNT and UGT unions in workplaces and localities across the region.

At the boundary between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs (ca. 56 Ma) a significant global warming event, termed the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), occurred. Records of this event are characterised by a negative carbon isotope excursion (CIE) which has been associated with the release of thousands of petagrams of isotopically light carbon into the ocean-atmosphere system, initiating changes in the carbon cycle, the climate system, ocean chemistry and the marine and continental ecosystems. The amount of isotopically light carbon that was required to cause the event, its source and the rapidity of its release are, however, are still debated. This study uses δ13CTOC, δ13Cn-alkane, δ13CCARB and palynological data to evaluate the PETM CIE in terms of the magnitude of the CIE in both continental and marine settings, rapidity of release and drawdown of carbon, and mobilisation of different organic matter (OM) pools as a response to the climate change. The sections studied span a continental to marine transect in northern Spain. This represents the first organic geochemical study of these PETM sections, one of the first comparisons of CIE magnitude between continental and marine sections within the same sediment routing system, and one of the first comparisons of the same OM proxies within different depositional environments. The data suggest that different OM pools were mobilised in response to the PETM, with reworking of older material, soil residence times, and contemporaneous vegetation all contributing. CIE profile shapes predominantly suggest a rapid onset and recovery from the event. The magnitude of the CIE was also assessed. The current resolution of the data suggests that the differences between continental and marine CIE magnitudes could be minimal within a single sediment routing system, perhaps establishing a realistic CIE magnitude for the PETM, for use in future modelling scenarios.

The spatial distribution and properties of rainfed orchards in semi-arid environments result from complex interactions between man and the physical and economical environment. This thesis investigates a number of these interactions in the context of the mechanisation of management practices since the 1950's. It is shown how the practice of clean sweeping (i.e. frequent shallow tillage) influences the orchard water balance and how the removal of traditional soil and water conservation structures affects the connectivity of overland flow to the river system. Although clean sweeping prevents transpiration and competition by weeds, it also constrains the root growth in the plough layer, so that the trees cannot access the water from small rain events. In addition, clean sweeping promotes accelerated soil erosion. It appears that the practice of clean sweeping limits the water availability in orchards on loamy soils with an annual rainfall in the order of 300 mm. It is demonstrated that the presence and properties of rainfed orchards are related to spatial patterns of soil characteristics and climate. The observed decline in conservation structures like terraces and check-dams leads to an increase in the connectivity of water and sediment to the river system. An alternative for these traditional techniques to retain the water and the soil is the application of cover crops. The advantage of cover crops is that they do not limit the field size. A drawback in dry areas is the competition for water and nutrients between the cover crop and the trees. Field evidence and water balance simulations suggest that cover crops are feasible in areas with an annual precipitation of 500 mm or more.

The emergence of supranational organizations like the European Union (EU) raises questions fundamental to the sociological study of regions and nation-states. Hypothetically, the EU could provide regions within nation-states most of the governmental services that they currently receive from the state. For regions with strong ethnic and cultural identities that have sought to break away from the nation-state over time, decreased political and economic dependency may provide the autonomy that they have been seeking. On the other hand, if the emergence of supranational organizations like the EU represents state-building at the global level, then the EU can pose a threat to regional groups seeking autonomy from the nation-state. At issue is how the growing influence of supranational organizations like the EU is affecting the demand for autonomy within ethnically, politically, and culturally distinct regions. This dissertation attempts to answer these questions by examining variations in nationalism over time for three regions in Spain (Basque Country, Galicia, Catalonia) from 1977-2002. In order to begin to answer this question, I created a new dataset of protest events in Spain in order to assess variations in demands for autonomy over time. The protest event counts were incorporated into a comparative historical analysis that seeks to explain the effects of the influence of the evolving European Union (EU) on contentious demands for autonomy within those three regions; the variations in the protest event counts over time were analyzed against additional economic and political data collected from archival materials. I find that, while nationalism declined overall over time, it did not disappear but rather took on a different character. The classical manifestations of nationalism transformed into distinct movements centered on human rights. I argue that this transformation took place as a result of three interrelated factors: 1) Forced cooperation between the regions and the central Spanish government; 2) Elite abandonment of the nationalist movement; and 3) The state of the regional economies. In contrast to what extant theory might predict, my results indicate that nationalism continues to exist for the following reasons: 1) The EU has not rendered the nation-state irrelevant, but rather has altered their competencies; 2) The EU has not resolved the tensions between the nation-state and regions, but rather has created new ones; and 3) The EU has not leveled the economic playing-field between regions, but rather has opened them up to new forms of competition. In conclusion, this dissertation argues that supranational organizations like the EU have altered the relationship between regions and nation-states, thus transforming - but not solving - the nationalist question.

This dissertation explores the history of women and litigation in the Spanish-Mediterranean city of Valencia between 1550 and 1600 through the examination of 114 civil suits filed in the appellate court of the Real Audiencia (Royal Supreme Court of the kingdom of Valencia). During this time, one-third of all legal cases reviewed by the Royal Supreme Court involved a female litigant as either the primary supplicant or defendant, and in some cases, women were both. Widows, wives, and daughters of Valencian artisans and merchants, farmers, and the elite initiated litigation over various socio-economic issues including disputed inheritances, dowries, yearly incomes, and urban and agricultural property. As good Valencian citizens, female litigants utilized the judicial system, particularly civil law courts, in order to negotiate their financial welfare during a time of economic prosperity in the city. In so doing, they demonstrated an understanding of local legal customs as well as their socio-economic rights, which they confidently defended. Historians have characterized early modern Spain as a litigious society, but there are few studies of Spanish litigation that focus primarily on the legal pursuits of women in civil court. Instead, scholarship has addressed Spanish women's involvement in criminal trials, an emphasis which tends to portray women as marginal to Spanish society. Civil litigation, however, presents women as individuals actively making daily decisions that impacted others from throughout their community. Moreover, the subject of women and litigation in Valencia reveals the degree to which local courts and the urban community, including men, supported women's legal and economic interests during the sixteenth century. Such local support further illustrates that women were central as opposed to marginal in early modern Spanish society.

This dissertation examines the formation of an agro-industrial working class within the citrus industry of Valencia, Spain. In a region that was historically defined by intensive agricultural production for market, the citrus industry in Valencia became the dominant economic sector in the decades prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Its workers, straddling the agricultural and the industrial, the rural and the urban, entered into a socio-economic relationship with the rural bourgeoisie in charge of the industry. This relationship was administered through the formation of jurados mixtos (mixed commissions), associations, and citrus cooperatives that directed the harvest, worked out export contracts, began irrigation projects, and organized labor. World War I produced a crisis within the industry due to the collapse of export markets and the lack of available shipping. Workers and small farmers suffered the brunt of the effects, and as a result, their relationships with the bourgeoisie began to break down. By the declaration of the Second Republic in 1931, workers and farmers had become far more politicized and dissatisfied. As landowners and commercial agents fled Valencia after the outbreak of war in 1936, workers and smallholders banded together in collectives, based on the established tradition of cooperation, to preserve the harvest and direct orange exports, the profits of which were increasingly important in the face of prolonged conflict.I rely heavily on documentary evidence from local journals and newspapers, political organizations, contemporary photographs, and local associations. Utilizing gender and labor theory and theories from cultural studies, I show the process of proletarianization through an examination of the labor culture within Valencia in order to complicate our categories of agricultural and industrial work and how the people of Valencia created a regional identity based on orange production.