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Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past | 
 enlarge | Author: Giles Tremlett
Publisher: Walker & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $9.10
You Save: $7.85 (46%)
New (29) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $9.10
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 188403
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0802716741
Dewey Decimal Number: 946
EAN: 9780802716743
ASIN: 0802716741
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
“Part modern social history, part travelogue, Ghosts of Spain is held together by elegant first-person prose…an invaluable book…[that] has become something of a bible for those of us extranjeros who have chosen to live in Spain. A country finally facing its past could scarcely hope for a better, or more enamored, chronicler of its present.”—Sarah Wildman, New York Times Book Review The appearance, more than sixty years after the Spanish Civil War ended, of mass graves containing victims of Francisco Franco’s death squads finally broke what Spaniards call “the pact of forgetting”—the unwritten understanding that their recent, painful past was best left unexplored. At this charged moment, Giles Tremlett embarked on a journey around the country and through its history to discover why some of Europe’s most voluble people have kept silent so long. In elegant and passionate prose, Tremlett unveils the tinderbox of disagreements that mark the country today. Ghosts of Spain is a revelatory book about one of Europe’s most exciting countries.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Great book about a fascinating country May 18, 2007
Brandon Wilkening (Bloomington, IN United States)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a great journalistic account of the social and political changes that have transformed Spain up to the present day. Tremlett discusses the country's past and present in fairly equal measure. He begins by looking at the legacies of the Spanish Civil War, discussing how only in the past decade has the full scale of the atrocities that took place come to light. He discusses how Spaniards whose relatives were killed by the Francoists have pushed in recent years for their relatives to be given decent burials. He also writes an interesting chapter on Franco's overall legacy, arguing that after his death and the country's transition to democracy he has been largely purged from public discourse. Despite this collective amnesia that he identifies, Tremlett points out that the same left-right cleavage that drove the war still lurks below the surface of Spanish society. The book also contains chapters on the Basque, Catalan, and Galician regions. Tremlett provides very insightful analysis of the origins of and main forces behind Basque and Catalan nationalism, while his chapter on Galicia details that region's emergence as a conduit for Columbian cocaine. One of my favorite chapters looked at gender relations in Spain, in which Tremlett provides some very amusing anecdotes that reveal contrasts between Spain and his native Britain. This chapter also discusses Tremlett's quest to understand the paradox of how a country can be so awash in brothels (which, he reports, 1/4 of Spanish men visited) yet relatively conservative in terms of the sexual mores of its people.
Other subjects covered here include Spain's emergence as a global tourism magnet (and the corruption that has often emerged alongside it) and the 2004 Madrid train bombing, which indirectly led to the defeat of the ruling party in the elections several days later. This was an interesting chapter, in which Tramlett looked at the ways in which the main parties tried to capitalize on this tragedy for political gain. Overall, I found Tremlett to be a very keen analyst of social and political relations, and there weren't really any weak chapters. For instance, I considered skipping a chapter on flamenco music, not being particularly interested in the musical form itself, but the chapter ended up including a fascinating discussion of the social history of Spain's gypsies.
Overall, I would heartily recommend this book to anybody interested in Spanish history, culture, and/or politics. I would NOT recommend it to those expecting more of a travel guide type of book; although Tremlett does visit and write evocatively about numerous regions, such descriptions are not the main substance of this book. If I had to make one minor criticism, it is that the chapters themselves were often not tightly organized. For example, the chapter on the Basques jumps from past to present and does not really follow any sort of structure. This wasn't really a problem for me, because Tremlett writes well and never bored me, but it might be a problem to some. Another minor complaint is that the book doesn't include a map, which might have been useful for readers like me who aren't intimately familiar with Spain's geography. Overall, though, I think that this is social and political journalism at its finest, and anybody wishing to learn more about this fascinating country could do worse than to start here!
Cracking the Spanish Mystique April 2, 2007
Andrea Huber Burda (Germany)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Having been to Spain a number of times since 1991, I always sensed that Spain was "different" from any other western European country. REcently I attended a Hemingway field study in Madrid by R. W. Burda, and I read this book before and during my stay. I can't say enough about the book--Giles Tremlett must have researched for years. I highly recommend this to anyone visiting or living in Spain as an expatriate, as Tremlett himself does. He begins with the ghastly Civil War years (perfect companion piece to the understanding of Hemingway's FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS and SUN ALSO RISES), the Franco years, pointing out that King Juan Carlos is the first-ever king elected by a dictator! For a country full of loquacious people (138,000 bars in Spain, more that any other European country!), they are eerily silent about the painful past. ...if you want to start to understand what makes Spaniards tick, read this book. Better yet, buy it along with a ticket to Madrid and read it there in all the tapas bars you can manage to get to!
An outsider's insight May 27, 2007
Stephen McHenry (Olney, MD USA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
A British journalist who has lived 20 years in Spain, married and raising his 2 children in Madrid, the author investigates, reveals and muses upon Spanish culture, history and the forces of the "two Spains" as they come together, or rub against each other, in forming the modern Spanish world. A fascinating look at Spain, its subcultures from the Basques to the Catalans to flamenco to the Galicians, to drug culture to tourism and the very difficult and delicate process of choosing to forget the differences of the Spanish Civil War and Franco's regime in order to move forward in a country that was once the most powerful on earth.
I like Spain and its history. This is one of the very best insights into modern Spain. Highly recommended.
 A Pale Secret May 22, 2007
Christian Schlect (Yakima, Washington/USA)
7 out of 15 found this review helpful
A liberal British newspaper reporter's hit and miss attempt at a book explaining Spain (his nearly adopted country) to us outsiders. Some hits (like how modern Spain handles the dark legacy of Franco) are offset by a number of misses.
Historical facts, or guesses as to historical facts, get thrown in as space fillers; events that catch Mr. Tremlett's fancy are highlighted, whether reflective of the whole Spanish society or not; the level of writing is often barely above that of a talented reporter on deadline. The final meandering chapter entitled "Moderns and Ruins", especially, cries out for editing.
Spain's a Fun Country to Visit April 29, 2007
John Matlock (Winnemucca, NV)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
The first time tht I went to Spain the country was still under Franco. When getting off the plane, every arriving passenger was photographed. This set a tone that made you never forget where you were. Now going to Spain is like going to any other country. There is no problem going from one city to another. The people are friendly to Americans. The food, trains, hotels, highways are all good.
This book looks underneath these obvious outward trappings to the held over anguish from the Franco time. He also looks further backwards to the regional conflicts with Basque seperatists, and more recently to the Islamist bombers who killed 190 people using bomb attacks in 2004.
Spain remains a little bit different than the rest of Western Europe. Mr. Tremlett has lived in Spain for twenty years and has done an excellent job of bringing together the history and the current situation to explain the current country that is Spain.
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