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Juan Francisco Fuentes Wins Spain’s 2025 National History Prize for ‘Bienvenido, Mister Chaplin’

The Ministry of Culture honored the essay for its lucid account of U.S. mass culture’s imprint on interwar Spain.

Overview

  • The state award, granted by the Ministry of Culture, carries a €30,000 endowment for the best historical work published in the preceding year.
  • The jury cited the book’s “agile and brilliant” narrative that clearly presents complex ideas about the arrival of American mass culture in early 20th-century Spain.
  • The study examines cinema, jazz, consumer modernity and skyscrapers, highlighting the influence of figures such as Charlie Chaplin on social practices and tastes.
  • Fuentes is a professor of contemporary history at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a numerary member of the Real Academia de la Historia.
  • He follows the 2024 laureate, Javier Moreno Luzón, recognized for “El rey patriota: Alfonso XIII y la nación.”