Mieres Reborn-Renaixement de Mieres: a village, its families and history in the making

In 1989 I began research on families and social change in post-Franco Spain. I moved into Can Musquera, a rambling old house in Mieres, a village in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees. Over thirty years I charted changes in how my Mierenc friends and neighbours made their livings, raised their families and imagined their futures as the economy ebbed and flowed and the distribution of generations changed. Some who had lived in the shadow of civil war and dictatorship were cautious or pessimistic: if times were good today, for sure this could only be temporary. Others were optimists and activists, reviving old traditions or creating new ones.

In 2012 Mieres Reborn was published. The Mierencs were intrigued and proud to be the subjects of a book, but only a few read English. So the mayor of Mieres decided to sponsor a liberally illustrated Catalan version with a prologue by the renowned social historian Joaquim Nadal. Every household in Mieres received a free copy — after which I became known locally not just as Sandy but as l’escriptor. Meanwhile, thanks to the kind initiative of our polymath friend Ramon Guardans, a frequent visitor to what he called ‘the International University of Can Musquera’, the independent publishing house Pol:len in Barcelona published a commercial edition. The book was fortunate to find the local reception that every anthropologist dreams of!