"This is not just another book: it is a major achievement." -- Eric R. Wolf, author of Europe and the People Without History

"By redrawing the boundaries of political activity, Kaplan uncovers a hidden dimension to Barcelona's culture of resistance that helps us to better understand its power and resilience." -- Pamela Beth Radcliff,Radical History Review

In Red City, Blue Period, Kaplan combines the methods of anthropology and the new cultural history to examine the civic culture of Barcelona between 1888 and 1939. She analyzes the peculiar sense of solidarity the citizens forged and explains why shared experiences of civic culture and pageantry sometimes galvanized resistance to authoritarian national governments but could not always overcome local class and gender struggles.

She sheds light on the process by which principles of regional freedom and economic equity developed and changed in a city long known for its commitment to human dignity and artistic achievement.

Although scholars increasingly recognize the relationship between so- called high art and popular culture, little has been done to explain what opens the eyes of artists to folk figures and religious art. Kaplan shows how artists like Picasso and Joan Mir, playwright Santiago Russinyol, the cellist Pablo Casals, and the architect Antonio Gaud, as well as anarchists and other political activists, both shaped and were influenced by the artistic and political culture of Barcelona.

Temma Kaplan is Professor of Women's Studies and History at the State University of New York at Stonybrook. Her previous book, Anarchists of Andalusia, 1868-1903, won the Berkshire Society Prize for the best book by a woman historian in 1977.

Read Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso's Barcelona Online

Paperback: 280 pages
Author: Temma Kaplan
Publisher: University of California Press (November 12, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520084403
ISBN-13: 978-0520084407

Introduction—
The Symbolic Landscape

The task I have undertaken in this book is to account for the peculiar sense of solidarity that the citizens of Barcelona developed between 1888 and 1939, and to explain why shared experiences of civic culture and pageantry were sometimes sufficient to galvanize resistance to national authoritarian governments but not always enough to overcome internecine struggles based on class and gender in the city itself. Most of all, I am concerned here with the process by which principles of regional freedom and economic equity developed and changed in a city long known for its commitment to human dignity and artistic achievement.

Women occupy a central place in this study of the creation and transformation of civic culture as a forum for political struggle. The grassroots politics in which activist women overwhelmingly participated has often been overlooked in studies of political life in Barcelona at this time. Yet because this study regards streets and cafés as political arenas, women's activities in them and in the movements that emanated from them assume a pivotal position in the arguments that follow. ...

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