Spain today
Current news from Spain and the world in English – Noticias de actualidad de España y el mundo en inglés.
MARÍA BLANCHARD. A PAINTER IN SPITE OF CUBISM 30 April to 29 September 2024
Tomorrow, 30 April, sees the opening of the exhibition María Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism. Through its 85 works this retrospective will offer a chronological survey of the different stages in the artistic life of the painter María Blanchard (Santander 1881 – Paris, 1932). Blanchard was the first woman in Spain to adopt the Cubist style and to experiment with fragmentation and multiple perspectives in her compositions, for which reason her contribution to the modern movement is considered particularly important. Combined with her technical mastery and the respect she earned among her contemporaries, this has made Blanchard a figure of reference. Sponsored by Fundación Unicaja, the exhibition is the latest in the series which the Museo Picasso Málaga has organised over the ...
CONTINUOUS LINKS: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Spanish Cultural
Institute by John Liddy. Spain Invoked Ireland had for centuries looked to Spain for military and spiritual aid against the common enemy, England, and many poems exist to verify that plea for help. Roisin Dubh (Little Black Rose), a folk poem possible from the 1600s, is one of Ireland’s most famous political songs. It is based on an older love-lyric in which the title referred to the poet’s beloved rather than, as here, being a pseudonym for Ireland: Roisin, have no sorrow for all that has happened to you/the friars are out on the brine, they are travelling the sea,/your pardon from the Pope will come, from Rome in the East,/and we won’t spare the Spanish wine for my Roisin Dubh. After the battle of Kinsale (1601), which lead to the defeat of the Irish forces, despite the help of 3,000 s...
Spain’s debt with “that lady”, the Irish writer Kate O’Brien
Pilar Iglesias-Aparicio If the King Philip II used the expression “that lady” to name Ana de Mendoza, the Princess of Eboli, in a derogatory and revengeful way, Kate O’Brien gave it a different meaning as the title of her seventh novel, published in 1947. The same expression may be used now, in a very different sense, considering O’Brien a “real lady”, for the high quality of her literary work; her love for Spain; her interest in Spanish literary and historical figures such as Teresa de Jesús, Ana de Mendoza, Jacinto Benavente and Miguel de Cervantes; her courage approaching certain subjects provoked that two of her novels, Mary Lavelle (1936) and Land of spices (1941) were banned in Ireland for opposing the rigid parameters of sexual moral imposed by Eamon de Valera government and another...
SPANISH POINTS: A Bilingual Anthology of Poems by John Liddy
An Irish Poet in Madrid As an Irish poet who has been living and writing in Madrid for the last four decades, I felt dutybound to compile a book of poems that would reflect my relationship with the diversity of Spain, its landscape and its people. The result of this endeavour is Spanish Points, a collection of my Spain-related poems chosen by me from nine books published between 1990 and 2020, together with a selection of recent unpublished poems. Overseeing the Spanish translations with my brother Liam, I had the help of Louis Bourne (RIP), Clara Janés, Germán Asensio, Ian Dornan, Trudi Kiebala (RIP), Miguel Ortega and Pilar and Mila Gutiérrez, who made valuable corrections and suggestions. Spanish Point There is a village in County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, called Spanish Poin...
Invitation to the Launch of the 2024 Festival Programme
We are delighted to invite you to the launch of the Limerick Literary Festival in Honour of Kate O’Brien. Novelist Dan Mooney will launch the programme for The Limerick Literary Festival at 5.00pm on Wednesday January 24th in O’Mahony’s Bookshop, Limerick. The Festival will run in Limerick February 23rd, 24th and 25th at the Dooradoyle Library and Belltable. The event continues to honour the life and works of the Limerick author, Kate O’Brien, while attracting prominent participants from all over the world. The Limerick Literary Festival is this year celebrating its 40th anniversary alongside the 50th anniversary of the death of O’Brien. It originally started as The Kate O’Brien Weekend in 1984 to mark the tenth anniversary of her death. We continue to celebrate the leg...
My experience of Derry
Por Pilar Iglesias Aparicio Derry was my door to Ireland. I arrived in Derry at the end of August 2002, and stayed there until 19 December, just the first term of the school year, as a teacher of Spanish in an only-girls Catholic school near the Bogside, participating in a teachers’ exchange program between the United Kingdom and the Spanish Departments of Education. Two planes and some hours at Stansted London Airport, took me from Malaga summer heat to the small town bathed by the river Foyle. I was surprised by the incredible loneliness of the streets on Sunday mornings, the loyalists’ inscriptions, and the terrible memory of a recent past still visible on the high columns that had been vigilance towers used by the British army during the Troubles. For some weeks in September, it...
Betrayal at Malaga
Introduction “The preparations for death are going on rapidly around me as I sit chained. I am to be shot with 60 others in about an hour”. Robert Boyd’s “calm and perfectly resigned” acceptance of his fate as he wrote in his final letter, dated 10 December, 1831, to his brother William. Robert Boyd (1805-1831), an Irishman from Londonderry aged 26, participated in, and partly financed, General Torrijos’ idealistic yet ill-fated expedition to overthrow King Ferdinand VII of Spain in 1831. Through betrayal by a presumed ally, General Moreno, the expedition failed, the participants captured and incarcerated. Then, without any semblance of justice, they were taken out and executed by firing squad. Background In early 1830s political unrest simmered in Europe; Spain was no exception. K...
Ireland in Spain
The IX edition of the Babieca Folk Festival in Burgos will be taking place from 18-25 November, with some acts from Ireland performing. Please see here for a full line up of events The Bloomsday Society will host their monthly reading in the Ateneo de Madrid on November 29 at 19h. Everyone is welcome to join. The Society is always looking for readers, singers and musicians, so please email them if you are interested [email protected]. The monthly meetings usually take place on the last Wednesday of the month. You may be particularly interested in their traditional reading of The Dead, on 27 December. You can contact them directly for the full programme of readings. The Spanish Irish Business Network will be hosting an informal end of year networking evening on Thursday November 30...