Spain

Anthony Bonner traces the route taken by a Spaniard, from Barcelona, who set out on his long journey throughorth Africa to Mecca with the backing of Manuel Godoy.

Both Don Carlos in 1568 and Don Ferdinand in 1807 were accused by their fathers of conspiracy to usurp the throne of Spain, as Douglas Hilt finds here.

Jan Read describes Al-Mansur, the honorific name for the leader who restored Moorish power in Spain during the late tenth century.

“Both the Aztec and the Inca states were the products of recent political developments”: Roger Howell discovers that the Spaniards who conquered them had little real understanding of the civilizations that they overthrew.

Alastair Hennessy draws parallels between Carlist Spain of the nineteenth century and Franco's twentieth century fascist regime.

Gibraltar, writes Charles Dimont, provides one of the examples of how the British Empire was “acquired in a fit of absence of mind.” 

Of humble origins, Rodrigo Calderón became a key figure at the court of Philip III of Spain. Notorious in life, he gained dignity and immortality in death, as Santiago Martínez Hernández explains.

The relationship between an ‘unquiet past’ and the concerns of the present has been a key feature of recent engagements with the Spanish Civil War, as Mary Vincent explains.

T.H. McGuffe analyses the failure of Admiral Byng to relieve the besieged British forces against French onslaught.

Disabled people were prominent at the court of the Spanish Habsburgs. Janet Ravenscroft examines the roles they played and draws comparisons with modern attitudes towards physical imperfection.

To an official court painter we owe the most harrowing records of the effects of revolution and war. W.R. Jeudwine discusses Goya and his times.

Mike Thomas looks back to a period of economic buoyancy in the Basque region, when a special relationship flourished between the people of Biscay and Britain.

Patricia Cleveland-Peck tells the story of Fanny Calderón de la Barca and her life as an author, ambassador’s wife and governess to the Spanish royal family.