A Nation of Monasteries: The Legacy of Víctor Balaguer in the Spanish Conception of National Monuments
Medieval Spanish monasteries were turned into monuments through a series of political struggles that claimed them for competing ideas of the nation from federalist, Catholic, regional, and fascist conceptions of Spain. Víctor Balaguer was a key figure in establishing the centrality of monasteries in the Spanish national imaginary. Monasteries, seen as nodes in a network that structured the Iberian territory since medieval times, were central to his political conception of the relation between Catalan and Spanish nationalism. Significantly, monasteries have remained central to debates about Spanish nationalism from 1835 to the World Heritage designations of the twentieth century. Seen in this light, monasteries appear more as instruments of political and cultural processes than as static objects. They are monuments in constant evolution, the changing and dynamic outcome of an intricate and complex process of confrontation and negotiation between social agents who struggle to define their value and meaning to the nation.
Dissecting Montserrat. On the cultural, religious, touristic and identity-related construction of the modern Montserrat.
This paper is a critical study of the monastery of Montserrat (Barcelona Province, Spain) and its cultural, social and touristic constructions n modern times, which runs parallel to the process of defining the identity of the modern Catalonia. 
 
The old monastery of Montserrat, founded in the 9th century, became a major pilgrimage centre, which was visited by pilgrims and travelers from its beginnings. During the Peninsular War (1808-1814), however, it was completely destroyed by Napoleonic troops. After some unsuccessful attempts to rebuild it during the “Renaixenca”, that is to say the Catalan Rebirth, a romantic movement addressed to recovering the national identity of Catalonia in the 19th century, Montserrat became the foremost element of the symbolic universe that was being build because it was capable of generating different readings thus allowing its identification with a broad range of social and generational groups, including those with opposing ideologies. The “Renaxienca” marked the invention, that is to say, the construction of the modern Montserrat in a complex process that comprised a mixture of culture, religion and tourism involving a broad variety of diverse groups. This process highlighted the importanc of generating the new shrine’s reading in order to assure its future success.
The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy
In this newly revised edition of his widely acclaimed work, Peter Burke presents a social and cultural history of the Italian Renaissance. He discusses the social and political institutions that existed in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and he analyzes the ways of thinking and seeing that characterized this period of extraordinary artistic creativity. Developing a distinctive approach, the author is concerned not only with the finished works of Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and others, but also with the social background, patterns of recruitment, and means of subsistence of this "cultural elite." He thus makes a major contribution both to our understanding of the Italian Renaissance and to our comprehension of the complex relations between culture and society. An excellent social history of the lives and culture of the artists and artisans which made it possible for the arts to flourish.