Paul Ilie's collection of newspaper clippings come from American, Spanish and French newspapers during the years 1960-1975. Also included is a manuscript written by Ilie and submitted to Praeger Publishers. The clippings cover all aspects of Spanish political life including labor unrest, political organizations, the Basque separatist trial, Franco's politics, and related issues in Spain and internationally.
This collection of newspaper clippings was compiled by Professor Paul Ilie. Ilie was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 11, 1932, to Abraham and Dora (Smilovitz) Ilie. He earned his BA from Brooklyn College in 1954 and his MA and PhD from Brown University in 1956 and 1959, respectively. He was then a faculty member at the University of Michigan from 1959 until 1982, holding the position of Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature from 1968 until 1982. In 1982, he became Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California Los Angeles.
Professor Ilie has received many awards and fellowships throughout his career, including Guggenheim Foundation fellow (1965-1966), American Council of Learned Societies fellow (1969-1970), National Endowment for the Humanities fellow (1977-1978), and he was a recipient of four Rackham research grants.
He has also published many texts, including La Novelistica de Camilo Jose Cela, Gredos (Madrid), 1963; Unamuno: An Existential View of Self and Society, University of Wisconsin Press, 1967; The Surrealist Mode in Spanish Literature, University of Michigan Press, 1968; Documents of the Spanish Vanguard, University of North Carolina Press, 1969; and Literature and Inner Exile: Authoritarian Spain, 1939-1975, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), General Francisco Franco took power as the head of state and established a conservative dictatorship that lasted until his death in 1975. Paul Ilie's collection of newspaper clippings covers the last 15 years of Franco's rule (1960-1975) and the three subsequent years (1976-1978). In the late 1950s the Franco regime agreed to a stabilization plan sponsored by the International Monetary Fund, changed its trade policy, and became a member of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. These changed allowed the nation to experience an economic boom in the 1960s (often referred to as the Spanish "miracle") and to become the tenth-largest industrialized economy in the early 1970s. Despite the prosperity of the 1960s, there was a growth of labor unrest, worker strikes, and responses from the government that altered labor organization. Also during the 1960s, the government underwent political moderation as part of a plan to gain acceptance to the European Community.
In the 1970s Spain's economy declined. At the same time the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque separatist organization, began committing terrorist acts, including the assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Spain's prime minister. In 1975, Franco ordered the executions of 15 ETA and FRAP (Frente Revolucionario Antifascista Patriatico) militants. Franco's own death in November of the same year allowed for Spain's transition to democratic rule and in 1977 free elections were held for the first time in approximately four decades.
Sources consulted Europe since 1945: an encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2001. Contemporary Authors. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 2002. (http://www.galenet.com/servlet/GLD/form?1=2) Who's Who in America, Chicago: Marquis' Who's Who, 1996.