The Spaniards: A Portrait of the New Spain

by John Hooper

A masterly portrait of contemporary Spain—fully revised, expanded, and updated

Modern-day Spain is a country changing at bewildering speed. In less than half a century, a predominantly rural society has been transformed into a mainly urban one. A dictatorship has become a democracy. A once-repressed society is being spoken of as a future “Sweden of the Mediterranean.” John Hooper's outstanding portrayal of the new Spanish society explores the causes behind these changes, from crime to education, gambling to changing sexual mores. This new, up-to-date edition is the essential guide to understanding twenty-first-century Spain: a land of paradox, progress, and social change.

Genres: Spain, Nonfiction, History, Travel, Spanish Literature, Politics, School

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John Hooper is currently the Rome correspondent for the Economist and the Guardian. Born in 1950, Hooper was educated at St Benedict’s Abbey in London and St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. At the age of eighteen, he travelled to Biafra during the Nigerian civil war to make a television documentary. Since then, he has spent more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent, working for - among others - the Economist, the Guardian, the Observer, BBC, NBC and Reuters. For several years in London, he was a presenter of BBC World Service’s ‘Twenty Four Hours’ current affairs programme.

For three years, he covered Spain’s eventful transformation from a dictatorship into a democracy. That posting and another, from 1988 to 1994, produced two books on Spain for Penguin, The Spaniards, which won the Allen Lane award for 1987, and its successor, The New Spaniards.

In 1997, he uncovered the so-called “ship of death” migrant trafficking disaster and was a member of the award-winning Observer team that investigated its aftermath.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re interested in Spain, and it’s a country that certainly deserves your interest, then there are several books I’d recommend. This is the first of several inter-related reviews for the books listed below:

1. The New Spaniards by John Hooper, 2nd edition, 2006.
2. Ghosts of Spain : Travels through Spain and its Silent Past by Giles Tremlett, 2006.
3. The Ornament of the World : How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal, 2002.
4. Spain in Mind (an Anthology) edited and with an introduction by Alice Leccese Powers, 2007.
5. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, 1938.
6. South from Granada by Gerald Brenan, 1957.
7. Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart, 1999.

Some people might feel that Hemingway deserves a place on this list. On your list maybe. The machisto ramblings of a drunken lecher are of little interest to me.

Why Spain? Well, after quitting my job in early 2007 (slight midlife crisis) I needed to find something else to do, so I set myself the goal of learning Spanish. Since then, I’ve spent roughly a year living there – an initial 6-month stay in 2007, with several subsequent visits of 6-8 weeks during 2008 and 2009. Most of that time was spent in Madrid, though I also had a stint in Salamanca, with time also in Andalucia (Seville and Granada) and a few weeks in Barcelona. In 2008 and 2009 I also spent time in Mexico, Chile and Argentina. Besides learning Spanish, my hope was to bring my life back into balance; the challenge of 6-months total immersion in a foreign country, forced to speak a different language, had an appeal.

I had a blast. I did manage to learn Spanish (total immersion works! and it’s not actually true that all the relevant synapses are sealed off at age eight). I also found out along the way that Spain is fascinating – far more complicated than I had anticipated. One example: the first time I used an ATM I realised that there are actually four official languages. Think for a moment about the hugely complicated linguistic and regional political ramifications. In Andalucia, the art and architecture are constant reminders of the Arabic influence on the culture; the same influence is evident in the language (just think of all the words in Spanish beginning with ‘al’). What makes contemporary Spain so interesting can be summarized in a single word – change. Predictably, Franco’s death in 1975 unleashed the winds of change. What was less predictable was the rate at which change unfolded, in almost every aspect of Spanish life, always sooner rather than later. Within the past 30 years, Spanish society has been almost completely transformed, with change becoming the country’s defining characteristic. Transformations that took generations elsewhere have been squeezed in to the span of a single generation in Spain.

How was the transition from dictatorship to democracy accomplished so smoothly? How did a country noted for sexual repression find itself in the European vanguard in legalizing gay marriage? What is the fallout from moving so quickly from a predominantly agrarian to a technologically advanced economy? What explains the extreme decentralization of a government which used to be rigidly centralized? How is Spain dealing with the recent influx of immigrants from its former colonies? Given the central role of its civil war in its recent past, what residual effects, if any, are still being played out? Will the Catholic church continue to play a central role in Spanish life? What about the role of the family? The role of women? What’s the deal with the Spanish royal family? If you spend any length of time in Spain, you find yourself asking questions like this. No single book on the list addresses them all, but the combined list was helpful in overcoming my initial disorientation.

The ferment of change and the Spaniards’ willingness to embrace it (for the most part) combine to create a certain vibrancy to Spanish life. Combine this excitement with the charm of the country’s less ephemeral attractions – the architectural, linguistic and cultural legacy of a rich and interesting history, and it’s a mixture that’s impossible to resist. (This paragraph is sponsored by the Spanish Board of Tourism).



The New Spaniards

John Hooper’s book is an extensive update to an earlier version, The Spaniards, which he wrote in 1987 after several years working as a foreign correspondent in Madrid, where he had been posted to cover Spain’s (eventful) transition to democracy. Some authors are lazy about second editions, doing little more than graft a cursory “update” onto the already existing version. John Hooper is not such an author – the additional material is extensive and has been integrated into the earlier text with great care.

The result is an excellent book. I came across it in 2009 and immediately wished I’d had it during my stay in 2007. One of its major strengths is an outstanding account, in its first section, of Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. In only 90 pages, Hooper provides a clear, insightful analysis of events from Franco’s death to the political upset that followed the terrorist attacks of March 2004. As a single source to help understand the key political effects of the last 40 years, and their residual effects on the current political scene, Hooper’s book is unsurpassed.

Its first section alone makes it worth reading, though the rest of the book is also very good. In 31 chapters all the major bases are covered. Hooper organises the material according to a few major themes:

Private Domains: with chapters on the Church, sexuality, the role of men and women, the role of the family, and the Spanish propensity for ‘living on the edge’ (gambling, addiction, prostitution and the like).
King and Country: with chapters on the monarchy, the army, and their relationship to the government.
A Fissile State: the Basques, the Catalans, the Galicians, autonomy in action.
A Changing Society: immigration, housing, education, welfare, the legal system.
New Perspectives: the press, TV and radio, the cultural revolution, flameco and bullfighting, art and artists, the new Spaniards.

Hooper writes clearly; though his style might reasonably be described as dry, I never found him boring. He has a skilled journalist’s ability to leaven discussion of policy or political events with a well-chosen concrete example or anecdote, so the reader’s interest is maintained throughout. The book’s comprehensive scope and its brilliantly concise account of Spain’s transition to democracy are particular strengths. My only possible criticisms are (very) minor – a certain remoteness in Hooper’s tone (which other readers might consider a virtue), and that his commentary extends only to 2004. This means that Hooper is silent about very recent developments, in particular, the ongoing debate about the legacy of the Spanish civil war that has been triggered by the discovery of several mass graves throughout the country. These criticisms do not apply to the next book on the list, Giles Tremlett’s “Ghosts of Spain”, which was a helpful complement.

For anyone with an interest in contemporary Spain, Hooper’s book would be an excellent point of departure.

[Paul of Bethesda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new Spain was born when Franco died. The death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in 1975 ended a 39-year dictatorship, and the people and government of Spain left tyranny behind and moved forward into democracy. And in his 2006 book The New Spaniards, John Hooper reminds us how dramatic the changes of the years since 1975 have been throughout Spain.

Hooper, a veteran British journalist who has published through U.K. stalwarts like The Economist, the Guardian, and the B.B.C., covered Spain’s 1975 transition to democracy, and later published his ideas regarding Spain as a book titled The Spaniards in 1986. This revised and expanded version, published twenty years after the original, builds further upon Hooper’s exploration of the political change from dictatorship to democracy and its aftermath, with a focus on how social values are changing in areas like religion, gender, the media, the legal system, and the arts.

In a chapter titled “Belief and the Church: Emptying Pews,” Hooper explains why the pews of Catholic churches in traditionally devout Spain have been emptying. During the Spanish Civil War, “Spanish prelates blessed Franco’s troops before they went into battle and were even pictured giving the fascist salute”, and when Franco’s forces won the war, Pope Pius XII congratulated the dictator on what the pope called “the victory, so greatly to be desired, of Catholic Spain” (p. 100).

That legacy of church support for a fascist dictatorship has haunted Spanish Catholicism ever since; and in modern times, as the church has grown increasingly conservative in an ever-more-liberal society, opinion polls have shown that “The Church [has] emerged as the second most widely distrusted” institution in Spanish society, with only television faring worse (p. 107; emphasis in original).

Modern Spaniards exhibit a comparably questioning spirit toward the army – like the Church, another institution that has traditionally held outsized power in Spanish society. Hooper writes that “Just as Americans remember where they were when the attack began on the Twin Towers, no Spaniard who was alive at the time will forget what he or she was doing on the afternoon of Monday, 23 February 1981” (p. 187) – for it was on that day that Francoist army officers, unhappy with the Spanish nation’s post-Franco move from dictatorship to democracy, attempted a coup d’état against Spain’s civilian government.

If the leaders of the coup had hoped that the nation’s constitutional monarch, Juan Carlos I, would support the coup like a Philip II-style autocrat, they were gravely disappointed; Juan Carlos courageously spoke out for democracy, and the coup attempt collapsed. Decades later, as Hooper tells it, army recruitment continues to sag, and the more pacifist-minded Spain of the present day offers “plenty of evidence that an unusually high proportion of Spaniards are reluctant to get involved in any war in any circumstances, even one in defence of their homeland” (p. 201).

This revised version of The Spaniards includes events as recent as the terrorist bombings in Madrid in 2004. Hooper alludes to this event as an example of problems and challenges facing the Spanish legal system: once the Algerian leader of the group that planned and carried out the attack had been identified, it emerged that “throughout the period” of the perpetrators’ preparations for the attacks, the group’s leader “should have been in a Spanish prison cell. He had been arrested and jailed on terrorism charges in 1997”, but a paperwork error resulted in his release in 2002. Hooper cites this sad event as an instance of how “Ineptitude and delay are sadly typical of the Spanish courts system, which has been overloaded and under-funded since at least the latter stages of the Franco dictatorship” (pp. 332-33).

One particularly intriguing chapter looks at flamenco and bullfighting as long-cherished Spanish cultural traditions that are nonetheless undergoing change in the modern world. Hooper suggests that “True flamenco offers Spaniards much the same as it offers tourists – a dash of the unusual in an increasingly drab world” (p. 410), and adds that as more and more Spaniards experience flamenco through electronic media rather than live performance, “there is a growing case for arguing that flamenco is taking over as Spain’s ‘national’ art form” (p. 416).

With regard to bullfighting, meanwhile, Hooper chronicles the ongoing debates between those who see bullfighting as gratuitous public cruelty to animals and those who argue that it is a quintessentially Spanish cultural tradition, and concludes that “The long-term threat to bullfighting is that it will come to be seen by Spaniards in the way it is seen by many foreigners – as something less than respectable: bloody, archaic, and not at all representative of the new Spain” (p. 426).

The New Spaniards works well as a reading choice for people from the Anglosphere who are travelling in Spain. I found Hooper's insights helpful, for example, while my wife and I were traveling in Seville. We saw a flamenco performance. Watching the grace and athleticism with which the dancers moved to the music’s compelling rhythms and dazzling guitar harmonies was magnificent; and at the same time, it had the flavour of a determined effort at rescuing cultural heritage – rather like watching the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans.

Later in our time in Seville, we stood outside the city’s largest and oldest corrida, watching the preparations for an evening of bullfighting. The matadors are brought to the ring in open-topped stretch limousines. Each matador shines like a midnight sun in his own gold-threaded, sequin-spangled traje de luces (“suit of lights”), and is greeted like a rock star by the adoring crowds outside the ring. We did not attend the bullfight, but dined in a bar across the street from the corrida, where the walls are decorated with the heads of legendary bulls that once fought in that ring.

We were still there, enjoying one more glass of Tempranillo, when bullfight fans came in during a break in the action. The fans talked animatedly about what they had been watching, gesturing with excitement to re-create key moments from the bullfighting – and again, there seemed to be a kind of urgency to it, as if these fans knew they might not always be able to enjoy bullfighting in exactly the same way. Hooper’s book provides the non-Spanish reader with new ways of looking at these core elements of Spanish life.

One emerges from The New Spaniards with a strong impression that Spain, a beautiful and culturally rich nation of 46 million people, has emerged from the long and dreary isolation of the Franco dictatorship, and that its destiny is now linked with that of Europe generally. Any reader who is interested in Spain, its recent history, and its future would do well to read John Hooper's The New Spaniards.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is just one of the many examples of how rewarding a place Goodreads can be. While looking for a list of good books on Spain, and being rather disappointed in what I found, I came across a book review by David, which contains—aside from his great review—a list of reading materials on Spain. Immediately convinced, I followed his suggestions; and I’m happy to report no disappointment. Thanks, David!

The New Spaniards is an updated and revised edition of The Spaniards, which was originally published in 1986. The revisions were extensive, and thus this text does not feel at all outdated. For subject matter, Hooper casts as wide a net as he can in the span of 400 pages, tackling subject after subject in a succession of pleasantly short but informative chapters. One learns here of Spain’s government, history, economy, culture, music, cinema, monarchy, military, sexual mores, as well as some of the centrifugal forces of modern Spain, the separatist movements in the Basque country and Catalonia.

It is useful to compare this book with Giles Tremlett’s Ghosts of Spain. The books are, at first glance, quite similar: they are both about modern Spain; both were published in 2006; both are by British journalists who have spent much time living here; and, most importantly, both have yellow covers. But the approaches taken by the two authors differ considerably. Tremlett is personal and immediate; he is married to a Spaniard, has children in Spanish schools, and thus has a lot invested in the future of Spain. His book is consequently more searching and impressionistic. He frequently writes in the first person, telling us of his travels throughout the country, the people he meets, the food he tastes, trying to convey some sense of what it’s like to actually live here.

Hooper, by contrast, is now living outside the country, although he spent many years in Spain. Perhaps as a consequence of this, his tone is much more detached and (as much as possible in a book of this sort) objective. His writing gets straight to the point; he keeps the reader’s interest, not through storytelling or flashy prose, but simply by presenting insightful information clearly and succinctly. Thus, although somewhat dry, I often found the book hard to put down, as it is a veritable feast of facts, figures, particulars, and generalities. So I am heartily grateful, both to Hooper and to Tremlett, for now I feel fairly knowledgeable about my new home.

And what a fascinating place to call home! I’m somewhat ashamed that I had so little interest in Spain before I came here, for it is a country well worth knowing. As many Spaniards like to point out, Spain is “different.” Just the other day, someone remarked to me that “Europe begins at the Pyrenees,” which is a saying here. There is, apparently, a widespread notion among Spaniards that Spain is quite unlike other European countries. Perhaps this is because Spain didn’t fight in either World War I or World War II, and lingered under a repressive regime until the mid 1970s, more or less isolated from the anxieties of the Cold War.

But Spain is changing quickly. Arguably, the theme of both Hooper's book and Tremlett's is “change.” Justifiably so, when you consider that Spain went from a Catholic society where divorce was nigh impossible to one of the first countries to legalize gay marriage. And perhaps because many Spaniards think that their country lags behind, they have fully and enthusiastically embraced modernity. One has only to skim the history of modern Spain to be convinced that, in the last forty years, Spaniards have thrown themselves into the future. Indeed, Hooper begins this book with the results of an international survey which found that, in Spain, there exists the biggest difference in basic values between the young and the old.

Though, of course, some things change and some remain the same. The Spanish attitude to work is, as far as I can tell, still quite different from both the United States and the northern European countries. After witnessing how much people work in New York, a Spanish friend of mine, with a worried look on his face, told me “Work is good, but there are other things in life.” Simply by walking around Madrid I notice a big difference. In New York, at rush hour, the streets are filled with legions of men and women dressed for work, cramming into the subway, all with vaguely worried looks on their faces. Yet here, rush hour is not very impressive; in fact, it took a few weeks for me to notice it at all. True, at certain times of the day the metro is likely to be more full of nicely dressed people; but it's never packed, and nobody runs for the train or tramples you on their way out the door.

The cultural attitude that has been programmed into me since birth is that work is a duty, and the more and the better work you do, the more worthy you are. The money earned is a marker of personal value; and the more accumulated, the better. Indeed, I know people who are tremendously successful and who make a great deal of money, but who are loathe to spend even chump change. The attitude here is quite the opposite. Spaniards seem to regard work as a necessary evil. This is not to say that they can’t or don’t work hard—during the recession, many worked themselves to the bone, and still do—but the idea that one’s productivity is a measure of one’s dignity, and the sort of perverse pride some people in the States take in staying long hours at the office, eating at their desks, and hardly sleeping or spending time with friends—this seems to be largely absent here. And while most people I know in the States think of enjoying oneself as a privilege to be earned through work, in Spain enjoyment is regarded as a right. Thus, while the rush hour here is easy to overlook, the crush of women wearing high heels and make up, and men with gelled up hair and collared shirts, is noticeable every night of the week.

Doubtless, what I’ve just written is a stereotype, lacking in depth or nuance. But if you want something more insightful, you’ll just have to read this book. It is a sweeping and penetrating look at modern Spain, written with authority and rigor. Indeed, it is a bit hard for me to believe that Hooper is a journalist, for this book lacks that characteristic myopia of most journalism, which concentrates exclusively on the present moment. Hooper, by contrast, is scholarly and maintains a historical perspective throughout. In short, I recommend this book heartily; and I hope that it inspires you as much as it has me to ponder modern Spain.

[Jose Moa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I as spaniard am in wholly agreement with the Spain and spaniards image that the author gives in the book.
The author knows deeply Spain,its inhabitants and is very well informed about all subjects concerning the country,i think he gives a realistic vission of my country.He makes clear that Spain is a very diverse country with strong differences between the north and the south and also makes clear that to day Spain is a country very very far of the tipical concept that foreigners had of a land of ignorant,violent,machist intolerant,deeply religious ,sexual reprimed people and that is not a flamenco,paella,bullfight homogeneus nation.In fact the bullfight is baned in several autonomous comunities,the galicians deeply dislike it .
As every country we have faults and things to be proud.
A thing we can be proud is our public universal free healthcare,our public hospitals have very high standars and for example if a ilegal immigrant without identification or a native in the same conditions dismais in a public hospital premises with a heart valve failure is sure in a right time he will be under free open hearth surgery without asking yet the costs would be thousands of euros.

A strongly recomended book for everibody with some interest in the to day Spain

[Igors · Rating 2 out of 5]

500-page wikipedia article

[Leo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this book because I was curious to know what a foreign though about Spain. Boy, what a big mistake.



There's two main problems in this book:

First of all, it's outdated. John Hooper went to Spain in the 70's to report on the country transition from to democracy after Franco's death. The book was originally published soon as "The Spaniards" and he wrote a somewhat update edition that was published in 2006. Obviously, a lot has happened since then, not least the global economic crisis. Even by 2006 standards, you can tell he wrote most of the book in the late 70's/first 80's because of the amount of stuff he mentions about the period, from political stuff to random tidbits or some gossip about a celebrity that was all the rage back then but has now faded into obscurity.
The book has six parts; the first one is a crash course on 20th century Spanish history mainly to give a background of the Civil War, Franco's time, the transition to democracy and the first years of it. It ends around 2004/05.

In part two, Hooper touches on a variety of topics:

-the church. You know, I'm going to tell something important. Spain was a officially Catholic country in the past, as well as most countries were, if not Catholic, religious. And during Franco's time it continued officially being religious but like everywhere else in the Western world, society in general has stopped believing in God and most people don't go to church. Yeah, maybe people baptize their children and do the First Communion but not really because they are believers, just because it kind of a tradition. The kid gets gifs when they do the First Communion, sort of like in a wedding. And you get to dress up so I don't know, maybe kids like it.

-sex: how it was a sort of taboo under Franco and after his time, there was a sort of revolution. This makes seems like the society was repressed and that wasn't really the case. It's just that sex wasn't talked about openly because officially the country was really religious. But I don't there was a huge difference from other countries around the time.

-a chapter called "Men and women: the machismo meltdown" because of course we can't have a book about Spain without mentioned the tired old trope of Spanish (and Latin American, and Mediterranean) man being a sexist pig.
-a chapter about family and how it so important in Spanish (and Mediterranean) countries.

Part four focuses on regional nationalisms and the decentralization (the division into 19 communities within the country, in a similar vein to the German states) of the country after Franco's death. I guess it gives a general idea Basque and Catalonian identities and why some of them want to be independent from Spain. There's also a chapter about Galicia.

In part five there's a chapter about education. There's been 8 bloody education laws since the 80's because every time there's a government change, they implement a new law basically to change nothing meaningful. Three of those since the book was written so yeah, pretty outdated.
There's also a chapter about housing also with some outdated information because things certainly have changed since the global economic crisis.

Hooper touches on every subject possible which results in two scenarios:
-He tells you a summary about a topic but presents information which is not really of much interest. This happens on the education chapter, for example.

-He tells you a summary about a topic but presents his own ideas as facts. For example, in the chapter talking about tax he says:
"It's tempting to put the whole thing down to the anarchic Spanish temperament." page 203.
"The legacy of almost eight centuries of conques and colonization can, I believe, be seen in many aspects of Spanish life such as an often casual acceptance of violence and bloodshed." page 224.

He disguises his opinion as fact through the whole book.
He mentions opinions pools and articles and so on but there's half a dozen notes in the book so there's no way to check anything. He also mentions random anecdotes someone told him as a general fact. That's like me saying that when I went to England I tasted an amazing homemade jam and the lady who made it said "of course, because it's English" so I can go around telling everyone that the English people are conceited.

Overall, I think this book is really problematic because while there's some interesting information, Hooper basically reinforces every Spanish cliché. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone wanting to know about the Spanish people because I don't want them to think we are the backwards people everyone seems to think we are. Hooper may love Spain but reading this book I feel like he does not understand us.

Anyway, this review is kind of a mess but I had to at least write something.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have had a love affair with Spain since the early 1960s when I spent a year in Madrid studying both Castilian and the history of the peoples of the Peninsula. From that first year-long stay through 1976, I twice returned to Spain as a graduate student and once, the last, in order to complete a post-doctoral study.

Those extended visits took place during the latter years of the Franco dictatorship and the time after Franco’s death and before the 1976 general elections. Since1977, my encounters with the Peninsula have occurred vicariously, through friends, books and internet news.

John Hooper’s work is among those recent sources that have provided perspectives on the post-Franco years. It has both its strengths and its weaknesses, although it is clearly one of the more authoritative volumes in English.

On the negative side, Hooper’s analysis stops with the 2004 election of the PSOE headed by José Luis Rodriquez Zapatero. A great deal has happened since that election including the world-wide recession that makes sections of the analysis either outdated or incomplete. For example, Part 5, with the chapters on social welfare, education and housing, seems glaringly incomplete. Also occasionally to the book’s detriment, Hooper can swamp the reader in excessive detail. It is that detail that moves the volume into the category of “textbook” with more appeal to the student of Spanish history than to the more casual reader.

On the positive side, the first 80 pages provide a clear understanding of the political processes and actions that brought Spain from dictatorship to stable democracy—the years from 1975 to 2004—as well of the role of Juan Carlos in that transformation. Future research by professional historians may provide more data about, for example the 1981 coup attempt, but Hooper, a journalist, has given the general reader and the more serious student the outlines of major events and the names of the players. His discussion of political decentralization [Chapter 16: Centrifugal Forces] is well developed as is the chapter dealing with immigration [Chapter 21]. The final chapters on the arts [Chapters 28-31] are also particularly informative.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

The New Spaniards is an overall explanation of every aspect of Spanish history, with a focus on current history after Franco. That is a huge topic, and Hooper was fairly thorough, but the dryness of the writing made it hard to get into. Potentially, it also made it hard to retain a whole lot. Reading it felt like a chore, and since it was so broad, I don't feel like I got as much out of it as I might have.

[Grant Colvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

it took me entirely too long to finish this book. many of the details were unnecessary, but the sections on the immediate aftermath of franco’s death, drug use, and bullfighting were particularly engaging. i am glad to be done with this adventure and now must grind to keep my reading progress on track. thank you for your attention to this matter!

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good, comprehensive history of spain from civil war through franco to about 2006. you can find similar chronicles of a general geopolitical nature, with some deep history thrown in and some culture in these here, and all would be a good start for learning about spain pre-21st century Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936 The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain Spain: A Unique History They Shall Not Pass: The British Battalion at Jarama - The Spanish Civil War Books Burn Badly We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past etc etc. so hooper's book here in many ways not very special, and also is uneven in its unique info, for ex his chapter of basques goes on and on about the unique language, the unique blood types, the fueros, the industrial revolution the eta blah ablah, heard it all before somewhere else, but, his chapters on housing, health care, social security, media, movies, dance, art, music, are well worth the reading and as hooper has lived and worked in spain for decades now, he can explain with personal example many more faceted and nuanced details of the nation of nations. as noted, this stops at about 2006 and he totally does not anticipate the crisis, but then again, all the elements of it, burst real estate bubble, huge unemployment, busted social security and health budgets, the austerity have all been in place for decades, so not that surprising now. of note to me he gives shout outs to authors atxaga, zafron and public libraries . libraries have risen 60% from 1990's, and library patrons up 140%. also explains the art triangle of prado, reina sofia, and thyssen collection and how those 3 places alone have probably the best and most art of any area in the world. i guess the good news in all this is franco is dead.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't imagine someone writing a more thorough and detailed portrait of Spain since the end of Franco. This book was a great read; I learned more about Spain than I could have hoped and it brought to mind many more questions that I hope to pursue in other books. I wish Hooper maintained a blog that would include his reporting and thoughts on Spain since the financial crisis, his many years of reporting and understanding of the country, it's history and culture would be a great contribution. (as far as I know the 2006 edition, which I read, is the latest) I also wish he would have included a bibliography of other suggested readings on Spain.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Se me ha hecho muy raro leer cómo habla un periodista inglés de los españoles. Ofensivo a veces. De intruso. Curioso también.

[Emily Braaten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hooper revisits his 1980 "encyclopedia" of Spain to bring it into the 21st century. The book traces Spanish history through its politics, paying particular attention to the recent (and unlikely) transition from dictatorship to democracy. It also explores the cultural norms and taboos that make Spain both a unique tourist destination and member of the EU. Unfortunately, 10+ years after publication and in light of the Catalan push for independence, the book could use another update.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Brit who left the UK in 2007, travelled the world, and now living in Spain, on the verge of taking Spanish nationality (and regaining access to the EU), I found this an excellent primer to the psychology of modern Spain - at least until 2006. Well worth a read if you feel like learning more about a fascinating and complex country. I hope John Hooper is able to write a third edition as so much has happened here in Spain since this edition was published…

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr Hooper knows a great deal about Spain (although everything is slightly dated within a couple of years now) and explains it well but the temptation to tell us absolutely everything he knows was too much for him and in certain parts of the book I found myself suffering from fact indigestion! A very useful book all the same.

[anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 3.5 rounded up

This book paints an excellent and exhaustive picture of the ways in which Spain has changed from around the last decade of Franco's rule until 2004. In its politics, economy, ethics, social make-up and society. Hooper handles dry and complex material in a way that makes it not super interesting but definitely clear and palatable.

[Alex Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow such a well-informed book that covers so many different aspects of Spain. As a Hispanophile, I found it utterly fascinating. Just a shame that it feels a little outdated in places as it was written a while back now. Would love an updated version to be published!!

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Now that Franco is dead..." A great many sentences in John Hooper's The New Spaniards could begin with some variation on that phrase, and indeed quite a few do. At this distance in time from the year 1975, it is easy to forget what a sea change the nation of Spain went through when Generalissimo Francisco Franco died and his 39-year dictatorship ended. The New Spaniards does well to remind us how dramatic those changes have been.

Hooper, a veteran journalist who lived and worked in Spain for almost a decade, originally published his ideas regarding Spain as a book titled The Spaniards in 1986; this revised and expanded version incorporates events as recent as the terrorist attacks of March 2004. In a very thorough manner, Hooper chronicles the political change from dictatorship to democracy and its aftermath, focusing on the importance of King Juan Carlos I's support for democracy and on the development of a multi-party system. He also explores changing social values in areas like religion, gender, the media, the legal system, and the arts.

Particularly intriguing are those parts of the book where Hooper discusses the tension between centralists in Madrid and cultural nationalists in areas like Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque region. Other highlights include a chapter that focuses upon bullfighting and flamenco as honored and long-standing cultural traditions that nonetheless are undergoing changes that reflect the larger cultural shifts affecting Spain generally. A thought-provoking final chapter speculates on the future directions that Spanish society might take.

The book worked well as a reading choice for a trip to Spain; I found Hooper's insights helpful as my wife and I traveled in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Granada, Segovia, and Toledo. Indeed, I wish I had had The New Spaniards with me on our first trip to Spain, when we spent time in Caceres, Salamanca, Leon, and Santiago de Compostela. Hooper's ideas always gave me new ways of looking at the Spanish people and the landscape they call home.

As I write these words, Spain has been very much in world news of late; amid an atmosphere of Europe-wide financial anxiety, one of the country's largest banks has reported losses of 4.3 billion euros and is seeking a 19-billion-euro bailout. It is impossible to say what direction this story might take. But the degree of worldwide attention dedicated to the story provides a reminder that Spain, a beautiful and culturally rich nation of 46 million people, has emerged from the long and dreary isolation of the Franco dictatorship, and that its destiny is now linked with that of Europe generally. Any reader who is interested in Spain, its recent history, and its future would do well to read John Hooper's The New Spaniards.

[Radiantflux · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eighth book for 2016.

Two words to describe this book: Comprehensive and outdated.

The author, a British journalist who lived for decades in Spain, clearly has a deep love and understanding of Spain and its peoples.

It is no exaggeration to say that the book is comprehensive. There are chapters devoted to the royal family, to the army, to tax, to flamenco, to the Basques, to machismo etc etc. Some of these chapters are very interesting, and some are just a bit tedious (the last part of the book covering the arts just seemed to go on and on - I never really wanted to know the ins-and-out of the Spanish dance scene, for instance).

The writing is in general good, if somewhat plodding. There is however no real narrative thread connecting the book as a whole together. So we are left with just lots and lots of chapters covering everything under the sun. There is also a sense that in this newer edition of an older book chapters were added, but nothing was taken out, giving the overall text a bloated feel.

What really kills the book though is that the narrative ends in 2005. For instance, knowing about the drug habits of the young (Chapter 12) in the early 2000s is sort of interesting, but also pointless, when you don't know what's happening now. The same could be said about all the chapters, whether they cover the arts, the royal family, bullfighting or Catalan politics.

A good book to get a somewhat dated overview of Spain, but one badly in need of updating and a hard edit.

[Bob Entwistle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every country should have a book like this! An overall synopsis of recent history, the economy, arts, press, regional differences and political lay of the land. Often it’s easy to find countless books on various kings and queens or in Spain’s case, the Franco years and the Civil War. But recent events are not so easy to read about.

The only drawback here is that the book is now 15 years old. Hooper amassed his knowledge of and writing about Spain while posted there as a foreign correspondent. As newspapers cut back on foreign news reporting, sadly this type of book may become even more rare. Highly recommend before visiting the country.

[Omar El Jundi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very poignant book for me as I moved to Madrid when I was two years old in 1979 and have lived there all my childhood and a significant part of my adult life - now in Barcelona.

I count myself lucky to have been able to experience first-hand the changes outlined in this book. I could go on for hours about how Spain has continued to evolve, even after the time this book was published. It's a country whose identity cannot be nailed down but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I couldn't recommend a better book about modern Spain than The New Spaniards. The subject matter is potentially vast but John Hooper has done a great job condensing it. It is an enjoyable and enlightening read.

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

A couple of years ago, I read "The Italians" by John Hooper and very much enjoyed it. That was not the case with "The New Spaniards." Maybe I just find Italians more interesting or maybe the author simply got better at telling a story by the time he got around to The Italians. Either way, this book was very dry and almost completely about politics (rather than the balanced mix of politics, culture, art, literature, and people that I was expecting). It was very dry and difficult to get through.

[José · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are planning on visiting Spain, I would strongly recommend reading this book. It's very engaging and, therefore, a very quick read. It covers all key facets of the modern Spanish state. Politics, religion, cinema, bullfighting, flamenco, the legacy of the Civil War, the regional issues, just to name a few topics.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as dry as the edition I read in 2005, but will have to re- read again in future, so 4 instead of 3. The little anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter give you hope, but still dry. Mostly impartial, and research is there. Wonder what he thinks of recent events involving the monarchy....

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was as an anthology of essays united by nothing more than the thread of being related to post-Franco Spain. You don't know where you're going, if you're interested in a topic, suddenly you'll be yanked away, but maybe get another morsel thrown at you in a later chapter.

Hooper has lived in Spain through the era which he describes and he's very good at describing the people, events, and locations. What he's not good at is expressing his own hopes, and explanations for the trends in society, which he may drop here and there, but never commits enough to go into detail about them.

The author is also British, and it shows. One could even argue that the book is for a British audience which I didn't mind.

I enjoyed the topics covered being as varied as bullfighting, the monarchy, religion, the media, government, and the separate nations that make up Spain. I think my favorite topic was coverage of the fascinating genetic history of the Basques. I'm absolutely serious when I say that I also respect authors who go into detail about topics which may be found as tedious as taxes or housing policies, but due to the arrangement of the book you're free to skip around without much sense of losing anything.

[Garnette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Torture. I was determined to learn something about modern, post-Franco Spain, and this book did that for me, but slowly, painfully. Reviews suggest that this is one of the better books about this period in Spain, and that might be true. Contemporary history (almost a contradiction in terms) is very difficult; we haven’t yet gained enough distance from it for objective analysis. The book covers the period from roughly the death of Franco in 1975 to about 2005, leaving unaddressed, of course, the impact of the 2008 financial crisis. A major theme is Spain’s diversity, the linguistic and cultural differences across different regions. The main focus is the sometimes difficult and painful transformation of Spain from a dictatorship to a democracy. It’s at its best in describing the rapid social changes which have transformed the lives of ordinary people. But those sections are dwarfed by dull detailed descriptions of political factions. I survived the book and emerged better informed, albeit a bit resentful about time spent.

[Duane Alexander Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, though even in its latest edition already a bit dated. That having been said, it's a must read for anyone who will be moving to Spain. The book covers everything from politics ro bull fighting, from flamenco to government corruption, from the state of the Catholic Church to the rapidly-changing role of women in Spanish society. The author seem like he leans a bit left, which is not surprising as he's a journalist, but what's important is that he is fairly objective and impartial.

The only book about Spain I like more is Iberia by James A. Michener. But that is getting into an old Spain, one that exists only as a ghost or reminiscence, in the back alleys and cathedral chapels and villages far removed from the bustling cities of Madrid and Barcelona.

[Felipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New Spaniards is a book written by John Hooper, journalist and current Rome correspondent for the Economist and Guardian. The work is a panoramic view of post-Franco Spain in all its aspects, covering politics, economics, society, culture, religion, and beyond. As a journalist, Hooper feels at home writing in a comprehensive and engaging style that resembles the texts seen in his profession. Additionally, the years he lived in Spain make themselves apparent, as he is clearly very knowledgeable in the areas the book proposes to explore. I especially liked the statistics he constantly brings up to either illustrate his point or add depth to the discussion. The highlight chapters were, in my opinion, the ones on sex (9), family values (11), monarchy (13), and the closing one (31). In short, The New Spaniards is a delightfully written and comprehensive work that will surely give you a panoramic view on the beautiful Iberian country.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went to Barcelona recently and it occurred to me that I knew very little about Spain's history, despite being an actual European fascist dictatorship for a good part of the twentieth century.

This is a very good primer on the last fifty years or so, and covers the political, economic and social upheaval perfectly for anyone who is interested in Spain and has never studied it or read about it before. Despite being written by a former journalist, it's written in a pretty serious, almost academic tone. The occasional anecdotes from the author's time in Spain are helpful for lightening the text and making the narrative more personable, so it's a shame he didn't make more use of them.

The 2nd Edition is from 2006 so it covers the response to the 2004 Madrid bombings, but I feel like another update could be called for.

[Julie Capell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book if you are preparing for a trip to Spain. It focuses on the changes the country underwent after Franco's death in 1975 through 2006, but there's also a lot of information on the Franco years as well as prior centuries. The beginning section, mostly covering politics, was a bit of a slog but subsequent sections were much more engaging. There are chapters on religion, the monarchy, the army, the Basque country, Catalonia, immigration, the welfare state, education, housing, and more.

The writing is fluid and if the cavalcade of statistics and facts gets a bit much at times (the author seems particularly enamored of polls) you can just skip forward a few paragraphs and get to something that catches your interest.