Casa Árabe is participating in the Cordoba Book Fair once again this year. At this 47th edition, we will be welcoming Cristina de la Puente and José Ramón Urquijo Goitia, authors of the critical edition and introductory study of the book, to be presented on Wednesday, April 27 at 7::00 p.m. on the Gran Bulevar.

The diary of Alfonso de Borbón y Austria-Este, brother of the Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne, narrates his trip to Constantinople, Suez, Egypt and Palestine in the spring of 1868 with his uncle Francis V, Duke of Modena, and a select group of travel companions.

With the candor and curiosity of an eighteen-year-old, Alfonso recounts his experiences and visions that, on the one hand, may be viewed within the tradition of grand tours by aristocratic tourists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries while, on the other hand, it may be regarded as a journey of religious initiation to prepare for his entry into the corps of Pope Pius IX’s Papal Zouaves. The journey is a magnificent testimonial about both the end of the European absolutist regimes and the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Further information on the Cordoba Book Fair

Cristina de la Puente has a PhD in Semitic Philology (Arab Studies) and is a researcher at the CSIC’s Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East. She works on the Western Islamic world from the ninth to fourteenth centuries, through two main lines of research: on the one hand, the transmission of religious knowledge through Arab texts (biographic dictionaries and sources on prophetic traditions) and, on the other, social history through works of Islamic law from that era. From 2012 to 2017, she was the CSIC Coordinator of the Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Assistant Vice-President of Internationalization, Assistant Vice-President of Scientific Areas and, last of all, Vice-President of Scientific and Technical Research.

José Ramón Urquijo Goitia is a researching professor at the CSIC; a correspondent member of Spain’s Royal Academy of History and Madrid’s Royal Academy of Heraldry and Genealogy. At the CSIC, he has held the positions of Coordinator of the Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences; Director of the Institute of History (2002-2006) and Vice-President of Organization and Institutional Relations. He has attended courses at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and has been a visiting fellow at the European University Institute. His main fields of research are the reign of Queen Isabella II and biographical dictionaries of Spanish politicians. He has authored over one hundred research papers published in specialized journals and books.