This is a remarkable book, telling the story of how Spain's relatively recent past inform the nation we have come to know today. The book is written by a man who's a journalist more than he's an historian, so he has dug around to find witnesses of the Civil War and of Franco's regime, to provide a vivid and disturbing picture of that era. He tackles other themes with equal vigour: nationalism in the Basque Country, in Catalonia, and the lack of such a movement in Galicia. Flamenco turns out not to be simply a rhythmic crowd-pleaser. Mass tourism. The family. The historically rich religious mix of the peninsula. The author is someone who loves Spain and has made it his home.

I finished the book with a far greater understanding of the country I am beginning to know through my daughter living there. It's given me a base from which I can continue to deepen my understanding of this complex and charismatic nation. ( )

4.5 stars actually. I can’t give it 5 because couple of chapters were quite difficult to wade through. I finished the book in several takes, first two being botched by these unfortunate chapters. I mean I’m not interested in flamenco or construction boom and ensuing machinations. However even in these cases I learned something curious, for example about larger than life cult singer I’ve never heard of - Camarón de la Isla. I persevered and was ultimately rewarded with excellent insights which only keen eye of a totally submersed observer could detect and relay to reader. Chapter on Basque country provides enough information and narrative to save you from reading a whole book on this matter (in my case it was Mark Kurlansky’s one). Galicia and Catalonia chapters are really good too.

It is a good example of being rewarded for the effort of reading: you trudge through 1-2-3 chapters, wavering to give up and then “BANG”: half a page of valuable and absolutely fascinating information few of your friends ever heard of.
( )

Original hasty review:

A curious book, and not really the read I was expecting. Initially, it looked like I might get something *close* to what I expected, since Tremlett starts off by telling the reader how Spain is his adopted country and that he can't really envision living anywhere else. However, he then launches on tale after tale of how crowded, conflicted, noisy and ... well, from my point of view, kind-of-awful the place is. The prose is journalistic (which makes sense given that Tremlett is a journalist) and oddly colorless.

So while, naively, I expected something colorful and drenchy from a book with both "Ghosts" and "Spain" in the title, I'm not getting that at all. I decided to read this because I've had a growing interest in moving abroad, and had thought of Spain as a potential destination. Now, I'm not so sure.

If I was [more] cynical I would opine that perhaps this last effect was intentional, and that Tremlett is similar to some of the people he writes about here ... and that -- now that he's in-country -- he'd rather YOU didn't move to Spain and crowd it further.

I may update this when I'm done with the book.

UPDATE: I'm not done, but I'd still like to update this. My words above were rather premature. My mind was changed by what I thought was a brilliant chapter on Flamenco and a perhaps-even-better one on the Basque matter (even if this latter was, like some of the material I'd earlier complained about, kind of unpleasant). As I come to the end of the book I'm impressed with the range of things Tremlett covers, and with his even-handedness. ( )

Impressed me with its detail. ( )

Although restricted by Tremlett's perspective, this book offers some insights into the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish part of my family and some of the rather surprising things I saw while visiting Spain a few years ago. It also offers a potentially cautionary parallel between Spain's identity crisis and that in the US, including a shared distrust of government and the media and a tendency to believe whatever we feel like regardless of facts. Upon finishing this book I'm left feeling both comforted and discouraged at the ways in which Spain is like the United States.

I appreciate that Tremlett writes about all corners of Spain even though his personal experience is primarily in Madrid and Barcelona. This can be a somewhat dry read at times, but it helped me to alternate between the paper book and the audiobook (and gave me a break from the comma overuse that seems common in certain British writing).

One disappointment during this book, though, was the discovery that the Castilian pronunciation of my last name is not as pleasant to my ear as the Latin American pronunciation. That Castilian "z"...it just doesn't sound right to me. Maybe it would grow on me if I lived there. ( )