Odyssey in Albion: The Spanish Republican Exiles in Britain (1936-1977)
Odyssey in Albion presents the life histories of those Spanish Republicans who made the painful decision to move to Britain following defeat in the Spanish Civil War. Their work and endeavours in exile demonstrates the very best in Hispanic cultural tradition.
| ISBN | 979-13-992033-1-8 |
|---|---|
| Páginas | 726 |
| Fecha de publicación | 2026 |
| Autor | Luis Monferrer-Catalán |
Descripción
This volume aims at perpetuating the memory of a handful of Spanish Republicans who set very high standards of moral behaviour when they chose to pay the heavy toll of exile for themselves and their children for almost their entire lives to preserve their freedom.
As a sort of a new Homeric journey in the early 20th century, the pages of Odyssey in Albion recount the moving collective story of a bunch of Spaniards whom the mutant winds and Fortune’s whims threw onto the British shores as unexpected shipwrecked after the defeat of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39 —a prelude to the still greater catastrophe of the Second World War.
The pages of this book feature various historical figures from Spain’s heroic and eternal vein in their new status as exiles, allowing us to glimpse their personal tragedies as they fought desperately for their lives in the misty Albion before fading away forever.
This volume is also a tribute to that minority of men and women, products of the finest Spanish liberal tradition, who were key leaders in the Spanish cultural, artistic and scientific renaissance of the early 20th century. They were the soul or the fruit of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, and of the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios. Until 1936, these institutions had been designing and directing the great project to modernize Spanish education in universities, laboratories, schools, and high schools, as a conditio sine qua non to build a powerful and modern country capable of standing on its own merits at the forefront of European science and research —a goal which we must never give up on.
In addition to so many unnecessary deaths occurred during the Civil War and in the post-war period, the defeat of their cause and their ideas also meant yet another painful contribution to the gigantic human, economic and cultural catastrophe that absurdly devastated 20th-century Spain.
Escrito por
Luis Monferrer-Catalán [Villahermosa (Castellón), 1954] graduated in English Philology (University of Barcelona, 1980). He has taught English at High Schools in Barcelona.
He has also carried out research work on the 1939 Republican exiles in Britain. In 1991 he presented his Ph D thesis entitled La producción intelectual de los exiliados españoles en Gran Bretaña (1936-1977), which gave rise to the volumes La voz de los náufragos. [La narrativa republicana de 1936-39] (1997), Odisea en Albión. [Los exiliados republicanos en Gran Bretaña] (2007) —and now to this 2nd. edition, updated and translated into English: Odyssey in Albion.
With the GEXEL Research Group at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, he contributed to the publication of the Diccionario bio-bibliográfico del exilio literario de 1939 (4 vols.) (2017). He has also devoted two trilogies to the region in the border between Valencia and Aragon: Una mirada al fin de una época (issued in 2007, 2010, 2017), and the literary trilogy Montañeses de Peñagolosa (2023).
He has also written the novel Los días del Molinar (Mallorca) (2024), and the essay La España silenciada. [Una visión de la España del siglo XX, de sus luchas y exilios, a través de una literatura desconocida] (2025). He is currently doing research work on the Spanish cultural legacy in Hispano-America.
