Centre for the History of Ibero-America

• Richard Cleminson
• Angel Smith
• Joshua Newmark
• Sophie Turbutt

• Danny Evans
• James Yeoman
• Nathaniel Andrews

CHIA seminar programme, 2022-2023 
Please note: all seminars will be online via Teams and the link will be circulated beforehand. If outside the University of Leeds, please email the Director of CHIA, Richard Cleminson, for more details.
 
5 October 2022 (16.00-17.30) 
Stephanie Wright (Lancaster University), Outliving Franco: war disability in Spain’s transition to democracy  
 
Abstract 
This talk will reflect on Spain’s transition to democracy through the lens of war disability. The advent of democracy brought opportunities but also challenges for the war disabled of the Spanish Civil War. Though it would never be enough to compensate them for the suffering endured, those wounded while fighting on the Republican side in the conflict were able to gain recognition of their veteran status after decades of hardship. Meanwhile, the war disabled of the Francoist side experienced a parallel process of transition, which saw the privileged status they had enjoyed under the regime unpicked by the Socialist governments of Felipe González. This process was intrinsically linked both to Spain’s political transition, and the slightly later military transition which sought to ‘modernise’ the Spanish armed forces. This paper will consider the experiences of the Francoist war disabled during this moment of reckoning, and will reflect upon the long-term legacies of the dictatorship on former military personnel living with disabilities in the present day.  

16 November 2022 (16.00-17.30) 
Patricio Simonetto (UCL), A Body of One’s Own: Trans Embodiment Technologies and Knowledge Production in Argentina 

Abstract 
Unlike other countries where gender affirmation surgery access was restricted but still allowed under certain conditions, Argentina has prohibited any treatment that affected reproductive organs since 1967. Different legal codes have penalised people dressed as the “opposite sex” since the 1930s. This criminalisation has threatened trans people’s right to existence and made gender affirmation practices clandestine, expensive and dangerous. This presentation analyses how male and female trans people challenged state restrictions by producing knowledge and homemade technologies to affirm their gender. He explores the history of a vast repertoire of medical and social practices, such as self-injected hormones or liquid industrial silicone. The presentation also explores how people have experimented with their bodies, performing them in living laboratories to affirm their gender beyond legal and medical control, and how this pushed them to precarious conditions. Finally, it addresses how activists have formulated an alternative body discourse that challenges the biotechnological promise of an alleged “correct body” as an undeniable trans future. 
 
23 November 2022 (16.00-17.30) 
Geoff Goodwin (POLIS), Work in Progress seminar (CHIA members only) 
Land Reform and Water Politics in the Ecuadorian Andes: Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Socioenvironmental Change  
 
Land reform went well beyond changing land use, tenure and distribution in Ecuador. Among other things, the reform, which took place between 1964 and 1994, set in motion a series of changes which transformed water relations and politics in the country. This was especially true in the Andes where the gradual dissolution of the traditional hacienda complex created more room for rural communities to organize around water. Managing drinking and irrigation water through a diverse range of collective relations and practices, the eclectic organisations that emerged through this historical process took greater control of water supplies and services at the local level and mobilized to transform laws and constitutions at the national level. This paper traces this process in the Ecuadorian Andes, analysing the interactions between land and water politics at multiple scales and reflecting on the spatial and temporal dimensions of socioenvironmental change.

7 December 2022 (16.00-17.30) 
Nick Sharman (Independent), Britain’s Informal Empire in Spain 
  
Abstract 
The explosive growth of the British Empire in the nineteenth century saw much of the developing world falling under direct or indirect British economic and political control. Nick Sharman argues that Britain’s need for markets for its expanding industries and for control over its trade routes meant that Spain came within its informal imperial reach for over a century. From its military support for the Liberal Monarchy in the 1830s to the naval blockades of the Iberian Peninsula in the two World Wars, Britain intervened with force whenever diplomatic influence failed. Economically, Spain’s mineral supplies were essential for Britain’s engineering, chemical and munitions industries right up to the 1940s. Strategically, the defence of the Gibraltar naval base was fundamental to the security of its imperial trade routes in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. On the Spanish side, the effect of these pressures was to fuel the long and bitter conflict between protectionism and free trade, a chronic source of the country’s political instability. In the twentieth century, they were an important influence on the development of the Franco regime’s autarkic economic nationalism.

International Workshop

Friday 27 January 2023

Family and Marriage in Twentieth-Century Spain: Gender politics, subjectivities and memory

Registration

9 March 2023
17.00-18.30, Room 3.11 Michael Sadler Building  
Raanan Rein (Tel Aviv University), ‘Fighting for Social Justice on Both Sides of the Mediterranean: Jewish Female Volunteers from Palestine in the Spanish Civil War’, hosted by CHIA, the Instituto Cervantes and the School of History 
 
Abstract 
The Spanish Civil War resonated across the world, including the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine. Despite widespread solidarity with the Spanish Republic, a near consensus existed among virtually all Zionist sectors against the enlistment of young volunteers to the International Brigades. Still, between 150 and 200 volunteers left Palestine for Spain, most of them members of the Palestine Communist Party (PCP). Fourteen of them were women. 
  
This talk focuses on the life trajectories of several of these female volunteers in order to illustrate their motivations to join the International Brigades but also highlight international women’s participation in the Spanish war and its limits. Based on recently discovered documents, it seems that at the current stage of the historiography of international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, it is mostly documents held in private hands, rather than the already researched public archives, that can help us shed a new light on the experiences of foreign participants in the Spanish fratricide. 
  
Dr. Raanan Rein is the Elías Sourasky Professor of Latin American and Spanish History at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Franco-Perón Alliance: Relations between Spain and Argentina and In the Shadow of the Holocaust and the Inquisition: Israel's Relations with Francoist Spain; and co-editor of Spain 1936: Year Zero and Spain and the Mediterranean since 1898. In 2016 he was awarded the title of Comendador in Spain's Order of Civil Merit, granted by King Felipe VI. 
 
13 March 2023
17.30, Grant Room, School of History 
Book presentation: James Yeoman, Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890-1915 (AK Press, 2022) 
 
In this session, we will hear from James Yeoman, the author of Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, who will be discussing his work with current School of History PhD student Josh Newmark. This will be an informal presentation to which all CHIA members and other interested colleagues are invited. 

17 May 2023
16:00-17:30, via Teams
CHIA Annual Lecture: Professor Eduardo Posada-Carbó (Brasenose College, University of Oxford), "Historicizing the Global History of Democracy: Latin America in the Nineteenth-Century”

7 June 2023
16.15 online via Teams 
Work in Progress – Peter We’re Off to Sunny Spain: mass tourism and the mobility revolution, 1959–1975 (CHIA members only)

Semester 1 

Wedneday 13 October 2021, 17.00-18.30 (online via Teams)
Angela Cenarro (University of Zaragoza), "Mujeres, género y Dictadura de Franco: elementos para un debate".

Wednesday 24 November 2021, 16.00-17.30 (online via Teams)
Research in Progress seminar by Gregorio Alonso (University of Leeds), "Hard times reveal good friends. Spain and Britain during the wars of Hispanic independence".

Wednesday 1 December 2021, 17.00-18.30 (online via Teams)
Pamela Radcliff (University of California at San Diego), "Defending Municipal Liberties: mobilizing a 'municipalist tradition' in Spanish democratic discourse from 1808 to the Present".
This event has been postponed to a later date.

Thursday 9 December 2021, 18.00-19.30.
Peter Anderson (University of Leeds) launches his latest book The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain in conversation with The Guardian journalist and historian Giles Tremlett, online event with Instituto Cervantes Manchester and CHIA.

The Instituto Cervantes in Manchester and Leeds collaborate with the Centre for the History of Ibero-America (CHIA) from the University of Leeds in the presentation of the new publication by the historian and member of CHIA, Dr Peter Anderson, entitled The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain: Taking, Losing, and Fighting for Children, 1926–1945. In the event, Peter Anderson will share ideas in a conversation with the Hispanist and journalist from The Guardian Giles Tremlett and the editor of the Academic History section of Oxford University Press, Cathryn Steele.

Media revelations that during and shortly after the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 the Franco regime removed tens of thousands of children from political opponents and placed them in care homes or with families loyal to the regime where they were educated to despise their parents’ beliefs sparked vigorous debate in Spain. To understand these ‘lost children of Francoism’, Peter Anderson’s new book examines the rise from the nineteenth century of ideas of the ‘dangerous parent’ and the growing power of the state to remove children. It explores the removal of children before and during the early Franco regime and asks who lost children, how, and why. The book also links removal practices in Spain to other countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, all of which face uncomfortable questions about their mass child-removal policies: Spanish practices help us understand these cases too.

View more details about the event and book your ticket via Eventbrite.

Semester 2

Wednesday 9 February 2022, 16.00-17.30 (online via Teams)
Danielle Terrazas Williams (University of Leeds), will present some reflections on her forthcoming book The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico in a Research in Progress seminar.

Wednesday 23 February 2022, 16.00-17.30 (online via Teams)
Eline Van Ommen (University of Leeds), Research in Progress seminar.

Wednesday 16 March 2022, 16.00-17.30 (online via Teams)
Angel Smith (University of Leeds), Research in Progress seminar, "Cultural Imperialism and the Orientalisation of Spain, 1800-1850".

Wednesday 11 May 2022, 17.00-18.30 (online via Teams)
David Brydan (King's College London), Annual Lecture, "What can Franco's Spain teach us about the history of internationalism?".
Professor Peter Anderson will chair our Annual Lecture.

20 June 2022
Anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula (a hybrid symposium at the University of Leeds organised by Joshua Newmark and Sophie Turbutt).

Further details of these events will be circulated in due course. For those interested in attending and who are external to the University of Leeds, please email the Director of CHIA, Professor Richard Cleminson (r.m.cleminson@leeds.ac.uk) for more information on how to join.

CHIA events 2020-2021
Semester 1 

Wednesday 21 October 2020, 4-5.30pm
Francisco Romero-Salvadó (University of Bristol), “Lenin in Barcelona: The Centenary of a Tragi-Comedy”.

Wednesday 18 November 2020, 4-5.30pm
Daniel Zapico (University of Leeds), “Socio-technical imaginaries for a regenerated Spain, or how to think of electricity and overcoming national/imperial decadence after the 1898 Disaster”.

Wednesday 2 December 2020, 4-5.30pm
Cláudia Castelo, “Gilberto Freyre and the theory of Luso Tropicalism”.

Semester 3

Wednesday 10 February 2021, 4pm
Erika Pani (Colegio de México), "In the Laboratory of Politics. The Confederate States of America and Mexico's Second Empire, 1848-1867”.

Wednesday 3 March 2021, 4pm
Helen Graham (Royal Holloway, University of London), “A Dream of Total Control: What practices of ‘preventive detention’ tell us about Francoism from the 1940s to the 1970s (and about what came next)”.

Wednesday 5 May 2021, 4pm
Francisco Eissa-Barroso (University of Manchester), “Neither Spanish nor Latin American History: Rethinking the structure of the Spanish empire through the Early Bourbon Reforms”.

Wedmesday 12 May 2021, 2-5pm
Modern Spain Workshop:

Daniel Zapico (Visiting Fellow, University of Leeds), “Socio-Technical Imaginaries for a Regenerated Spain, or How to Think of Electricity and Overcoming National/Imperial Decadence after the 1898 Disaster.”

Raúl Mínguez Blasco (Marie Curie fellow, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds). “The Council Generation. Gender and Religious Identity in Progressive Catholic Women (Spain, 1960-2020)’.

NB. All these events will be held on Teams. If you would like to attend one of these talks as a guest please email Professor Angel Smith.

Semester 1

Wednesday 9 October 2019, 3-5 pm
Workshop. Global History and the Hispanic World. Interventions by Pol Dalmau, Jesús Sanjurjo, Angel Smith. Chaired by Manuel Barcia,.Baines Wing SR 2.15.

Friday 11 October 2019, 4pm
Dr Ricardo Funes (Yale/La Havana Universities), “The Cuban Socialist Revolution and the programme to ‘transform nature’.”
Grant Room, Michael Sadler Building, 3.11.

Tuesday 29 October 2019, 6pm
Brian Hamnett (University of Essex). “The Hispanic Monarchy between Enlightenment and Revolution”. Grant Room, Michael Sadler Building, 3.11.

Thursday 7 November 2019, 6pm
Ignacio Peyró, “Josep Pla, el catalán anglófilo”. Event sponsored by the Instituto Cervantes, Business School, Maurice Keyworth LT (G.02)

Wednesday 20 November 2019, 5pm
Angela Cenarro (University of Zaragoza), “Mujeres, género y Dictadura de Franco: elementos para un debate”. Grant Room, Michael Sadler Building, 3.11.

May 2019 Postgraduate Showcase Event. Date to be confirmed.

14 May 2019 Will Fowler, St. Andrew’s, ‘The Forgotten Mexican Civil War of the Reforma, 1857-61’ Chair Paul Garner. Grant Room 18.00.

30 April 2019 Stephen Jacobson, Universitat Pompeu Fabra ‘Republican Imperial Pretensions in the Atlantic World:  Southern European Legionnaires in Buenos Aires during the 1850s’ Chair Nir Arielli. Grant Room 18.00.

27 and 28 March 2019 Refugees and Exile: Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the End of the Spanish Civil War, Blenheim Terrace / Parkinson Building For more information and to book a place

12 March 2019 Pol Dalmau, Leibnitz Institute of European History, ‘Press, Politics and National Identities in Catalonia'. Chair Ángel Smith. Grant Room 18.00.

February 2019 Rebecca Earle, Warwick, annual lecture. ‘Poetry, Philosophy and Potatoes’. Date and venue to be confirmed.

12 February 2019 Paul Garner, Leeds, ‘Challenging Historia Patria in Mexico. The Porfirato in Mexico (1876-1911). Parkinson 4.20.

29 January 2019 Ainhoa Campos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, ‘Hunger in Civil War Madrid’ Grant Room 18.00.

12 December 2018 Jesús F. Chairez, Manchester, ‘From Wardha to Chapingo’. Grant Room. 18.00.

04 December 2018 Massimo Aresu, Leeds, ‘Diásporas romaníes en el Mediterráneo durante la Edad Moderna’ Grant Room. 18.00.

27 November 2018 Matt Kerry, Leeds,‘Dirty Drawers and Battlefield Amours: Politics, Sexuality and the Social History of the Spanish Civil War’. Grant Room 18.00.

12 October 2018 Gregorio Alonso, Leeds, ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities. London, Hispanic Exiles and the Imperial Race

02 October 2018 Morten Heiberg, Leeds, ‘The Will of the Weak. US Spanish-Relations after Franco, 1975-1989’. Grant Room. 18.00.

July 2018 Giles Tremlett The Guardian and author of Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen and Isabella of Castile: Europe’s First Great Queen will be giving a lecture at the International Medieval Congress sponsored with the Instituto Cervantes and the Centre for the History of  Ibero-America.

15 May 2018 Postgraduate Showcase Event.

03 May 2018 Professor Lisa Surwillo (Stanford University), The Color of Motherhood - Enslaved Cubans under the First Spanish Republic.

24 April 2018 Symposium on Spanish anarchism. Speakers include Professor Martha Acklesberg (Smith College), Professor Richard Cleminson (Leeds), Dr Danny Evans (Leeds), Nathaniel Andrews (Leeds).

27 February 2018 Dr Enrique García Hernán Institute of History, within the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences (Centro de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas) at the Spanish National Research Council ‘A Spaniard Henry VIII’s Court. The Glory and Decline of Juan Luis Vives.’ This event forms part of the Institute of Medieval Studies Lecture Series and is sponsored with the Instituto Cervantes and the Centre for the History of Ibero-America.

20 February 2018 Dr Nerea Aresti, Universidad del País Vasco, Dr Inmaculada Blasco Herranz, Universidad de la Laguna, Dr Carmen Caballero Navas, Universidad de Granada, Professor Pamela Beth Radcliff , University of California San Diego. Symposium on Gender History (from the medieval to the modern period) in Spain. In English (with a translator for Dr Blasco). Chair: Dr Iona McCleery.

05 December 2017 Professor Antonio Cazorla Sánchez, Trent University (Canada), ‘Sites without Memory and Memory without Sites: on the Failure of the Public History of the Spanish Civil War.’

21 November 2017 Professor Manuel Suárez Cortina (Universidad de Cantabria.) Professor Angeles Barrio Alonso (Universidad de Cantabria), Dr. Enrico Accai (University of Leeds) ‘Federalismos entre Europa del Sur y América Latina: un debate historiográfico’. In Spanish. Chair: Dr Peter Anderson.

17 October 2017 Chia Annual Lecture Professor Adrian Shubert (York University, Toronto) ‘What do historians really think about biography? Thoughts from Spain’. In English. Chair: Dr Peter Anderson.  

16 October 2017 Round-table Discussion on the crisis in Catalonia. Speakers Adrian Shubert (York University, Canada), Angel Smith (University of Leeds), Antonio Martínez Arboleda (University of Leeds).

28 June 2017 David Alegre (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) "Western Europe at Civil War: Violence, Collaboration, Counterinsurgency, and the French, Walloon and the Spanish Volunteers Fighting on the Eastern Front (1941-1945)"

26 April 2017 Postgraduate Research Showcase Seminar 

29 March 2017 Enrico Acciai (University of Leeds) “Spanish Civil War and International war volunteering: towards a new transnational history”

22 March 2017 Marci Freedman (University of Manchester) "Jewish Texts, Censorship and the Spanish Inquisition – An Exploration"

01 March 2017 Gonzalo Capellán (University of La Rioja/Spanish Embassy in London) “A war of words. The new language of revolution from Mediterranean to Atlantic”

22 February 2017 Giulia Quaggio (University of Sheffield) "A transnational encounter between exiles: Recovering the essay Una doble experiencia política: España e Italia (Francisco Ayala-R. Treves, 1994)" 

06 December 2016 Carl-Henrik Bjerstrom (University of Leeds) 'Entrenching Democracy: The Ideal of the Republican Soldier-Citizen in the Spanish Civil War'

01 November 2016 Mark Lawrence (University of Kent) 'Renovating the Two Spains: a comparative study of the First Carlist War and the Spanish Civil War'

25 October 2016 Rúben Serem (University of Nottingham) 'Old wine in new bottles? The eternal recurrence of the myth of Badajoz (August 1936)'

19 April 2016 Fernando Molina Aparicio (Universidad del País Vasco) ‘Myth and Identity. The Basque Country under Francoism, 1936-1975’

01 March 2016 Gemma Rubi (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) ‘Las visitas reales de Alfonso XIII y la nacionalización de las masas’

23 February 2016 Antoni Kapcia (University of Nottingham) ‘Cuba at the Crossroads: But where exactly has it come from and what might shape its future?’

09 February 2016 Javier Ramón Solans (Münster Universität) ‘The invention of the Latin American Church. Vatican Authority and Political Imagination’

CHIA First International Symposium – 10 May 2016

Violent Anticlericalism in Modern Spain

• José Luis Ledesma (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): 'Anticlericalism and the Civil War: Origins, functions and limits of anticlerical violence' 
• Julio de la Cueva (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha): 'Not only Spain: anticlerical violence in Mexico and the Soviet Union in the interwar period'
• Maria Thomas (University of Exeter): ‘Contra el vaticano, poder clitoriano’. Women and anticlerical mobilisation in contemporary Spain.

Three of the most prestigious scholars in the field will address the use of physical violence against ecclesiastical personnel and property in Modern Spain. The recurrence of instances of anticlerical violence in the first decades of the twentieth century will be examined by taking into account the underlying cultural, social and political factors and conditions that framed them. Contrasting views, as well as new approaches and future challenges affecting this field of studies, will be offered. Shorter interventions by our colleagues Gregorio Alonso and Peter Anderson will, respectively, present and conclude the event.

CHIA Inaugural lecture: Professor Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra – 27 April 2016

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Martyr, Doctor, and Virgin, Three Times Saint

Summary: Sor Juana’s life and her rapid transformation from a beloved poet of the court into an introverted self-lacerating mystic actually point to her success and wide acceptance as a formidable intellectual, exactly the opposite fate that liberal and feminist historiography have repeatedly brought down upon her. The Catholic historiography rest satisfied by claiming that Sor Juana did not suffer any persecution. Unlike them, I argue that support for Sor Juana among large sectors of the Spanish clergy in both Mexico and Spain (and the court as well) was formidable. So much so that the last two volumes of her works came out in print as dossiers for possible canonization. A narrative emerged among the learned that Sor Juana’s theological works amounted to evidence of extraordinary epistemological miracles and that Sor Juana’s vita recorded a life of martyrdom for learning. She came to be seen as a potential saint that belonged in three separate celestial hierarchies: doctor, martyr, and virgin. 

Guest speaker: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra is Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of more than 60 academic articles and book chapters. His books include: How to Write the History of the New World (Stanford 2001 -translated into Spanish and Portuguese); Puritan Conquistadors (Stanford 2006; translated into Spanish); Nature, Empire, and Nation (Stanford 2007); The Atlantic in Global History, 1500-2000(co-edited, with Erik Seeman),The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade (co-edited with Jim Sidbury and Matt Childs); and an edited collection Entangled Empires and Severed Archives: Anglo-Iberian Atlantic Worlds 1500-1830 to be published by University of Pennsylvania Press. His new book project is entitled Bible and Empire: The Old Testament in the Spanish Monarchy, from Columbus to the Wars of Independence.

Outputs: Journals edited by members of the department include the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Atlantic Studies and European History Quarterly.