As Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre, my principal activities, apart from teaching and research, have been concerned with the expansion of our publishing programme, with widening our relations with regional governments in Spain, particularly Catalonia, Galicia, the Basque Country and Valencia, as part of on-going fund-raising efforts and with a substantial programme of public lectures.
In addition to specific projects in collaboration with the Basque, Gellego and Valencian universities and other regional entities, the most substantial project has been the creation of the Catalan Observatory|.
In terms of my own activities, in 2011, I finally published, in Spain, my book El holocausto español|. It was published in the UK and the United States in early 2012. It has generated many hundreds of articles and reviews both in the rpinted and the digital media. In the UK, it was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and also named as the Sunday Times History Book of the Year. My own research continues. Most recently, I have been working on a biography of Santiago Carrillo, the leader of the Spanish Communist Party.
The publishing programme of the Cañada Blanch Centre has been expanded considerably, principally in the form of the twenty-four books that have appeared under the imprint of Sussex Academic Press. These have included works by major scholars such as Helen Graham, Gabriel Jackson and David Wingeate Pike, a number of important works on aspects of the International Brigades, on medical services during the Spanish Civil War and on post-war reconstruction. We also have a publishing programme in Spain in collaboration with Valencia University.
My own work has been recognised in various ways. In 2006, at a ceremony presided over by the King of Spain, I was inaugurated into the Academia Europea de Yuste, where I was given the Marcel Proust Chair. (The Academy has thirty members, including Umberto Eco, José Saramago, Reinhard Selten, Mstislav Rostropovich and Alain Touraine). I was also awarded the Premi Trias Fargas for my book on war correspondents in the Spanish Civil War. In 2007, I was made Caballero Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica in recognition of my work on Spanish history. In the summer of 2008, I was appointed a corresponding member of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (the Catalan Social Science and Humanities Academy). Since then, I have been awarded honorary doctorates by the Université de Pau and the University of Extremadura.
As Marcel Proust Professor of the European Academy of Yuste, I was part of the juries that elected Simone Weil and Javier Solana as the respective winners of the 2008 and 2010 Charles V Prize. At the University of Valencia, I held the 2009 Chair in Social Thought.
LSE Experts entry: Professor Paul Preston|.