Chapter 1 recovers the history of an Iberian family involved in royal service across Portugal and Spain during the first decades of the Iberian Union (1580–1640). It shows how family memory and political loyalty became professional assets for young, university-trained jurists. By moving back and forth between courtly and university stages across the two monarchies, some of these young letrados came to think of themselves as political polymaths. Ultimately, they found opportunities to reach out and receive support from transnational networks of neo-stoic thinkers and practitioners which was fundamental for articulating the composite social and political life of the Iberian monarchies within and beyond the Iberian Peninsula.

This chapter focuses on the life and writings of Pietro Napoli Signorelli (1731–1815) and provides one way through which to map out the shifts and transformation of the cosmopolitan ideal in an age of growing patriotism. Napoli Signorelli wrote and lived between the intellectual and political worlds of two connected peripheries of Europe, Italy and Spain, and one of its intellectual centres, France. The Bourbon courts in Madrid and Naples provided the political thread for these debates and the Neoclassical tradition the background for them. The querelle between the ancients and moderns remained central, as writers searched within and outside of the Neoclassical tradition to stake their claims. Knowledge of the shared ground of the Neoclassical canon bound enlightenment writers together but also provided the fodder to drive them apart. Napoli Signorelli’s work and life illuminates a crisis or reconfiguration of cosmopolitanism, specifically at the end of the eighteenth century, when the Neoclassical underpinnings of cosmopolitanism were unsettled by emerging patriotic identities within Europe.

Between 1808 and 1814 Spain and Portugal were devastated by the single most destructive episode of the Napoleonic Wars, namely the so-called Peninsular War. Originating in a foolhardy attempt on the part of Napoleon to render the former country a more reliable ally in the wake of his bloodless occupation of the latter in October 1807, this soon turned sour. French armies sustained one embarrassing reverse after another; assailed by multiple problems, the puppet regime of Joseph Bonaparte was unable to impose its authority; the Spanish armies proved easy to beat but hard to eliminate; the British ejected the French from Portugal and turned her into an unassailable stronghold; the French suffered heavy casualties; and political revolution in Spain made it very hard to claim the ideological high ground. Had Napoleon been willing to concentrate all his efforts on the struggle, he might yet have prevailed, but his decision to attack Russia badly destabilised the position of his armies, the result being that within two years the whole of the Peninsula had been liberated. All this makes for a dramatic story, but in practice the impact of the Peninsular War on the fate of Napoleon was very limited, its real importance lying rather in its influence on the history of Spain and Portugal.

For over a century, flamenco has been closely associated with productions of Carmen around the world. Bizet’s gypsy protagonist is often depicted as a flamenco performer while it has become commonplace to perceive aspects of flamenco in Bizet’s score. Yet this nexus only developed gradually during the first three decades of the opera’s existence. Bizet was largely unfamiliar with flamenco and composed Carmen while flamenco as we recognise it today was still coalescing in Spain, especially in the flamenco-orientated cafés cantantes of Seville and Madrid. During the Belle Époque the rise of flamenco and its global recognition occurred almost in tandem with Carmen’s establishment in the international operatic repertory. French and Spanish opera singers of this period, from Emma Calvé to Elena Fons and Maria Gay, sought hispanic authenticity for their Carmens by drawing on the Spanish entertainment cultures of Seville, Granada and even Barcelona. The tripartite structure of this chapter employs the conceit of offering different perspectives on the intersection of Carmen and flamenco in the Belle Époque loosely framed around the basic elements of the artform: toque y palos, baile and cante.

In Chapter 6, the analysis of mobilization moves to examine the complex role of legacy in squats. It starts with a case in which prior protest experience was counterproductive (illustrated with Seoul’s Yongsan) and continues with a comparison of three squats with enduring anarchist legacies (Hamburg’s Gängeviertel and its antecedent protests of Park Fiction and Skam, as well as Toronto’s Pope Squat, and Madrid’s Tabacalera). In these latter three cases, experiential tools and cultural producers were critical to the outcomes. The analysis also illustrates that prior protest is helpful in gaining the squat but an enduring outcome depends heavily on organizational features and varieties of capitalism.

Chapter 7 focuses on cases in which protest relied on judicial tools whose complexity required significant legacy in similar protest.In this type of protest, expertise is absolutely central. However, none of these campaigns are waged only in the courts; on the contrary, they share rallies and demonstrations of various kinds. Therefore, even in these cases, experiential tools play a variety of important roles, including sustaining resident engagement, publicizing concerns, and displaying clout to allies and opponents. The cases examined start with Madrid’s area of Lavapiés, with anti-eviction campaigns led by Asamblea Lavapiés and PAH Centro. The chapter then examines cases in Los Angeles. In Skid Row, it presents campaigns led by LA CAN. Of special importance is the campaign that led to the 2008 Residential Hotel Unit Conversion and Demolition Ordinance, which permanently preserved more than 15,000 homes for the lowest income tenants throughout the city. It also presents the campaign by Trust South LA to protect affordable housing in Rolland Curtis Gardens, where the threat of legal prosecution and regulation pushed the owner to sell and allowed the forming of a land trust on the site.

What is zarzuela? What is its relation to operetta? If the first question can only be addressed in general terms, the second requires a more complex answer. The development of Spanish-language music theatre has been shaped over four centuries by dialogue with opera on one side and operetta on the other. The influence of external operetta movements on zarzuela ranges from Parisian opéra comique and Offenbach’s opéra bouffe, through the English musical plays of Jones and Monckton to the Viennese ‘silver age’. All these nourished the Spanish genre while (as Nietzsche recognized) extending the concept of operetta. After examining classic género chico works such as Federico Chueca’s La Gran Vía and Ruperto Chapí’s La revoltosa, Christopher Webber highlights the period between 1910 and the early 1920s. In those years lavish opereta español was the fashion in Madrid, notably Pablo Luna’s key work El asombro de Damasco, written with London tastes in mind. A brief coda surveys developments after the Spanish Civil War, notably Pablo Sorozábal’s Black, el payaso. This daring 1942 satire on Francoist rule, masquerading as a homage to Emmerich Kálmán, was one the last works to yoke the societal concerns of romantic zarzuela with operetta.

In Spain, apprenticeship was regulated locally. In Madrid, the local guilds played a crucial role in the organisation of apprenticeship, but alternatives were also available. This chapter examines artisan apprenticeship in Madrid during the early modern age. The main body of research comprises a sample of 4,570 indenture contracts elicited from the Historical Notarial Archive of Madrid. They correspond to over a hundred trades and cover the period 1540–1830, with the central focus on the eighteenth century. In addition, apprenticeship channels alternative to the traditional guild-like model are also explored, which impinged overall on women. A relatively small percentage of apprentices paid their master for the training. Remuneration of the apprentice’s work happened mostly in kind, as room and board, but increasingly also in cash. The majority of Madrid’s apprentices did not follow in their parents’ trade, but rather opted for a different trade. Most apprentices in Madrid completed their training, but relatively few managed to become masters. The masters’ ranks were mostly filled by immigrant journeymen. During the second half of the eighteenth century, state policies pried open the grip of the guilds on the apprenticeship system, allowing more women to acquire craft skills.

Charles Baudelaire’s notion of the flaneur – a figure who mingles with crowds and street scenes but also observes and documents the sights from a distance – captures well the early life of John Kennedy Toole and the character of Ignatius Reilly at the center of his famous novel. Ignatius is modeled upon a colleague of Toole’s at a small college in Lafayette, Louisiana, a scholar of Medieval culture and history who came from New Orleans. It also traces the novel’s publication history and extraordinary success in the Spanish-speaking world, as well as the tragic end to young novelist’s life by suicide.