Spain

Born in 1991 in Almería, Spain
Student (History, University of Sevilla)

"The pervading influence of the Old Regime in the rural society of Post war Spain. Case: Brácana, Granada (Andalusia) (2009)

After the Civil War (1936- 1939), Spain returned to the ancient political structures abolished in the Second Spanish Republic (1931- 1939), in which political power and the Catholic Church didn’t allow any democratic process. Francisco Franco assumed the role of the fascist leaders of the time and tried to create a totalitarian state in which economic development was directly controlled by the state. This left  many regions in the same undeveloped situation as before. Andalusia in southern Spain was one of these regions, its rural areas being very impoverished after the Civil War. The author documents the situation in Brácana, a small village in Granada in the 50s, when there was a clash of interests between the local nobility and the Church of Granada. The aim is to show how rural society was dominated ideologically by the Catholic Church and socially by the local nobility.

For his project, Germán won the second prize in the Spanish national history competition, whose main topic in 2009 was “What did my grandparents do in the fifties?”.