Hispania

"Cultural studies" is a flexible term that incorporates a wide variety of traits and roots its theories in several foundations. Tatjana Pavlovic applies the mutability of cultural studies to investigate what she refers to as "a socio-historical history of consumerism" (3) in her recent book titled The Mobile Nation: España Cambia de Piel (1954-1964). She seeks to understand how literature and publishing, television, cinema, the creation of the child star, tourism, and national automobile manufacturing industry spurred a culture of consumerism in Spain in the mid-twentieth century.

The book is well organized with an explanatory introduction, five chapters, a solid bibliography, and easy-to-use index. The author paints a complete portrait of 1954-64 in Spain, and she underscores the cultural, political, and social context of that staggered decade. What is remarkable about this book is that even though Pavlovic examines a plethora of cultural and economic phenomena, she constructs one narrative line in which she successfully interconnects these topics.

In the introduction, Pavlovic outlines a clear map of the political and social situation of Spain from the mid-1950s to mid-1960. The notion of Spain as a "mobile nation," as the title of the book illustrates, highlights the concept of movement during the specified ten years in several senses, which include mass exodus to cities and to coastal tourist towns, the augmentation of the middle and working classes, the modernization of Spain's industries and infrastructures, and, in general, a perceived notion of less overt dictatorial control and the transition to more prosperous social and economic times. Employing a clever tactic, Pavlovic links her study to the book titled España cambia de piel, written by Falangist Waldo de Mier. The original book, whose first and second editions were published in 1954 and 1964 and offer a parallel frame to the hinged decade that Pavlovic analyzes, presents an optimistic view of Spain and its future. In his book, de Mier explores Spain's geography, people, and customs, praising the country's movement towards positive change. Modernization in Spain during the 1950s came in several forms, as Pavlovic reminds us; Spain joined UNESCO in 1952 and was admitted to the United Nations in 1955. [End Page 762]

Pavlovic successfully groups together Juan Goytisolo, José María Castellet, and Carlos Barral, three big hitters in Spain's post-social realism literary scene, in the first chapter. She contends that these men redefined mid-century Spanish literature. Goytisolo, Castellet, and Barral, as the author shows, shifted to more experimental literature, criticism, and publishing. Once again, Pavlovic effectively links her study to the metaphor of mobility and movement. She states that Goytisolo's transition took place both literarily and critically, and she identifies Goytisolo's shift in two novels, Juegos de mano (1954) and Señas de identidad (1966), and in two critical texts, Problemas de la novela (1959) and El furgón de cola (1966). She highlights mobility from Castellet's La hora del lector (1957) to his "Tiempo de destrucción para la literatura española" (1968), and she underscores Barral's decisive move from Colección Biblioteca Breve to Prix International de Littérature. The evolution of these three important figures, anchored in the transition from social realism to experimentalism in literature, functions as a metaphor for Spain's literary culture in general and highlights Spain as a nation in transition.

Television was a tool for fomenting religious hegemony in Spain in the 1950s, like Pavlovic lays out in her second chapter. Quickly, however, television programs became ways to spread consumerism. This second chapter opens Pavlovic's study to other media, including cinema, which the author examines in the third chapter. Pavlovic studies two Spanish child stars, Joselito and Marisol, whom she astutely describes as representing the country's transition from the old autarky to the new culture of consumerism, respectively. Ironically bound to their public personae, the two young stars were not allowed to age...