This history explains the intersection of politics and culture, and the formation of a national identity, during Spain's Second Republic and Civil War. It counters recent scholarship claiming that leaders of the Second Republic had no programmes to encourage a Spanish national identity.

A cultural and intellectual history that explains the intersection of politics and culture, and the formation of a national identity, during Spain's Second Republic and Civil War. It counters recent scholarship claiming that leaders of the Second Republic had no programmes for "inventing traditions" to encourage a Spanish national identity. Focusing on the Second Republic, 1931-1936, Sandie Holguin illustrates how various intellectuals and politicians of the Republican-Socialist coalition used theater, literature, and film to aid the construction of a unified Spanish culture and history. She uses memoirs, journals, newspapers, parliamentary debates, and archival sources in her examination of the impact that cultural reforms had on the transformation of one of Europe's oldest states.

The Intellectual and Social Roots of Republican Spain
"If These People Had Received But a Refrain of Poetry"
Creating Consent Through Culture
Theater as Secularized Religion
Taming the Seventh Art - the Battle For Cultural Unity on the Cinematographic Front
The Cult of Reading - Literacy and Regeneration
The Spanish Civil War - Culture on the Battlefield.