Barcelona is one of the most visited destinations from the UK – from stag nighters through to academics.

This paperback original looks at the history of Barcelona and the way it has transformed itself from the Franco era to its claim to be a sustainable city of the twenty-first century.

Michael Eaude discusses everything Barcelona is famous for: Gaudi, festivals, food, the Rambles, the football club, modern and mediaeval architecture, the revival of Catalan. He explores the tensions within the city, linguistic and racial, and between the developers and local communities which have their own ideas on how their city can thrive.

Barcelona is particularly strong on the way the city has been described in literature – from George Orwell and Jean Genet to Manuel Vazquez Montalbán and – most recently – in Shadows of the Wind. It will appeal to anyone who has visited the city, or plans to, who is interested in going beyond the tourist hotspots to find out more about what makes Barcelona so special.

"Partly a jauntily erudite guide to the city, partly a sharply written history, Eaude's book excels at spiking his deft snapshots of squares, bars and sites with flavoursome fragments of Catalan lore and literature. Unlike other Barcelona boosters, Eaude knows how hard the road from Franco to freedom proved, and shows us the marks of that struggle. The city's candid friend, but no hyper merchant, he is the kind of companion who even knows (say) that Placa George Orwell was one of the first spots to have CCTV. So Big Brother is watching you - or was, till anarchists severed the cables." The Independent

" ... a lively and impassioned study of Barcelona today" TLS

From El Pais:
"Eaude threads his narrative between literary quotes, historical details and a critical look at one of the most highly reputed European tourist destinations".
"Eaude shares with other veteran Hispanophiles the wish to use writing to smash the stereotypes that the English still hold about Spain"

Michael Eaude has lived in Barcelona for sixteen years, and is fluent in Catalan and Spanish. He writes for the Spanish and English press, including the Times Literary Supplement. He is on the editorial board of the new English-language daily, Catalonia Today.

Catalonia has been one of the major success stories of the last 25 years. Emerging from the dark days of the Franco dictatorship, when Catalan was once banned in public places, Catalonia has staked a claim as a dynamic European region with its own autonomous government, and a language policy which is the envy of many other minority languages across Europe. With the Olympic Games in 1992, Barcelona became synonymous with a stylish, modern approach to combining great public projects with private sector entrepreneurship. Barcelona will once more be the focus of world attention in 2004, when it hosts the Universal Forum of Cultures.

Catalonia brings together an account of Catalan history and culture, and the central, multi-faceted concept of nationhood. John Payne places particular emphasis on the Middle Ages and the modern period, when Catalonia has performed upon the world stage. The book concludes by reviewing the complex ideas around identity and nationhood, and the central role of the Catalan language.

"The book contains several original gems. Payne is particularly original when explaining ecology and nationalism... this thoughtful book is a thorough, loving account of Catalonia and its problems." - Times Literary Supplement

John Payne began his working life as a lecturer in English at the University of Barcelona. His first book on Catalonia was published in 1991. He is the author of Journey Up the Thames: William Morris and Modern England, published by Five Leaves.

Dictionary for the Idle includes chapters on:

Clocks and watches
Plagiarism
Quixotism
Reading
Temperance
Vengeance
Vice
Xenophobia... and all stops in between.

The Dictionary itself is Quixotic, giving little prominence to the important but providing scholarly essays on the unimportant. This is a book you can dip in to - get hooked, and flip from entry to entry. Many of the entries are allegorical - about living under the Franco dictatorship. Many of the entries are not.

Joan Fuster was chair of Catalan literature in Valencia. During his lifetime he was burnt in effigy by fascists and survived a bombing at his house. In death, his grave was desecrated. He is still revered as Catalonia's premier essayist.

Published in association with the Anglo-Catalan Society.

A Female Scene: Three Plays by Catalan Women

Magnolia Café (Magnolia Cafè) by Angels Aymar,
An Absent Look (Un aire absent) by Mercè Sarrias
and Re-Call (Re-Clams) by Araceli Bruch.

Edited and with an Introduction by Dr Montserrat Roser i Puig

This is a volume of three Catalan plays in translation: Magnolia Café by Angels Aymar, An Absent look by Mercè Sarrias and Re-Call by Araceli Bruch with an academic introduction and the transcript of a round table on and about them. The plays and their writers have been chosen because they encompass dramatically different writing styles and can be seen as representative of the type of work that women playwrights are undertaking in Catalonia today.

The three plays which make up A Female Scene are representative of the new direction in Catalan drama where the more feminine values of fluidity, empathy and variety challenge the conventions of established drama. 'Magnolia Cafe' is a subversive re-working of the Comedy of Manners whilst 'An Absent Look' deconstructs tragedy, the bastion of theatrical dynamics. Similarly, in its divergent, empathetic idiom 'Re-call' - an evocation of the free-thinking nineteenth-century intellectual Lou Andreas Salome - underlines this dramatic challenge to the vision of previous Catalan theatre.

Published in conjunction with the Anglo-Catalan Society.