Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: One of the main objectives of the foreign language class is to facilitate the understanding between the native culture of the student and the foreign language culture. This presentation will address different resources to approach the culture of Spain: literature, music, art, etc. Activities that can be used in the Spanish classroom, including reading literary texts, listening to songs, and observing art works will be shared with the audience.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper explores interactions between women?s movements and state institutions at the regional and local levels of the Spanish state. The comparative case study is an overview of the time period following the democratic transition to the present day in two Spanish regions: Andalusia and Galicia. The theoretical focus of this paper is based on social movement theory?s view of movement-state relationships as oppositional and confrontational. I conclude that social movement theory?s oppositional model of movement-state relationships is appropriate in some cases; however, when there is a lack of confrontation between feminists and state institutions, the role of the state and the concept of political opportunity structure become unstable. Moreover, an understanding of movement-state relationships becomes complicated as one considers many levels of state-movement interactions and discovers that cooperative and conflictive relationships can simultaneously exist between the same association and different levels of the state or with the same administrative level and different associations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We examine variations in the party composition and size of governments across Spain’s seventeen autonomous communities from the early 1980s (the first regional elections in the new democracy) to 1999. We employ two main sets of independent variables: institutional differences, such as varying thresholds under PR rules; and variations in the structure of the party system, including in the partisan expression of regional conflicts. Thus, we assess the degree to which findings from cross-national studies can accommodate variations across Spain’s regional governments. We find overall that the forces that explain national-level government formation also help illuminate the composition of executives at the regional level. In particular, the existence of a core party tends to result in minority governments, which occur frequently in Spanish regions.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: This essay examines the rise of government-sponsored anti-terrorist death squads in Spain between the years of 1983-87, a period that coincides with the return of the Left to power since the inter-war Second Republic. It locates the roots of this disturbing development in the institutional culture of the Spanish military inherited from the Franco regime as shaped largely by its counter-terrorist practices. This argument challenges widespread assumptions about a clean break in authoritarian practices in Spain following the democratic transition of 1977. It also calls into question the assumption that civilian supremacy over the military was obtained in Spain after the military reforms enacted following the failed 1981 military rebellion. Finally, this analysis suggests the propensity of new democracies, even successful ones, to resort to terror as they battle terrorism and the unintended consequences of this strategy to the process of democratization.