Civilizacion y Cultura de Espana

I used Cantarino's "Civilización y cultura de España" for some of my classes in Burgos, Spain, and found it to be an excellent supplement to the material that we were studying in class (from prehistory and Atapuerca to post-Franco democratic Spain). Each chapter covers a specific period in Spanish history, along with notes on art, architecture, music, literature for each time period. I found the level of Spanish to be very easy, although it might prove a bit challenging to second or third year Spanish students. The look of the book is a bit outdated (colour photos would have been nice for the art photos!), and the "history" ends at 1996 or so. Overall, a worthy investment, complete with maps, a timeline, a glossary, and plenty of useful, compact information about the most important events and people in Spain throughout the ages.

I took Professor Cantarino's class in college & we used his book, Civilizacion y Cultura, as our textbook. The class itself was terrific and the textbook was excellent. It is the BEST book available if you are interested in Spain's history, art, architecture, and music over the last 2000 years. I still have the book.END