"Based on extensive fieldwork, The Memory Work of Jewish Spain offers a well-theorized and well-historicized account of the heritage industry in contemporary Spain that encourages tourists to visit former Jewish quarters (real or invented) where Jewish culture was, precisely, obliterated. The book's most original feature is its analysis of the "multidirectional memory" that entangles the "recovery" of Jewish culture with the memory work around the victims of Francoist reprisals in and after the Spanish Civil War, in both cases predicated on an unpalatable history of violence that many prefer to ignore. "
Jo Labanyi
Based on extensive fieldwork, The Memory Work of Jewish Spain offers a well-theorized and well-historicized account of the heritage industry in contemporary Spain that encourages tourists to visit former Jewish quarters (real or invented) where Jewish culture was, precisely, obliterated. The book's most original feature is its analysis of the "multidirectional memory" that entangles the "recovery" of Jewish culture with the memory work around the victims of Francoist reprisals in and after the Spanish Civil War, in both cases predicated on an unpalatable history of violence that many prefer to ignore.
David Wacks
Erudite and accessible, Flesler and Pérez Melgosa's study is a long-awaited deep dive into the present of Spain's Jewish past.