A cruise offering from Smithsonian Journeys and PONANT
Follow the Iberian coast from Lisbon to Barcelona along the southern shores of Spain, exploring captivating cities and World Heritage-listed architecture in Seville, Granada, Palma de Mallorca, and Valencia
Cruising Southern Spain and Portugal
From Lisbon to Barcelona aboard the 184-guest Le Dumont d'Urville or Le Laperouse
8-9 days from $6,970
A cruise offering from Smithsonian Journeys and PONANT
Follow the Iberian coast from Lisbon to Barcelona along the southern shores of Spain, exploring captivating cities and World Heritage-listed architecture in Seville, Granada, Palma de Mallorca, and Valencia
Experts
Linda Ehrlich
Dr. Ehrlich has introduced Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan films at the Guggenheim Museum (N.Y.), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), University of Miami, the Cleveland Cinematheque, and the Cinematheque Ontario (Toronto). She writes and lectures on art history as well.
She was an invited speaker at the symposium on Catalan Cinema held at the Stanford Humanities Center. In Spain she has spoken at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), the University of Girona, and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid).
Her book on a noted Spanish director--The Cinema of Víctor Erice: An Open Window--appeared in the Scarecrow Press Filmmakers series. Her taped commentary on The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena, dir. Víctor Erice, 1973) appears on the Criterion DVD. In addition, she has edited the memoirs of sculptor/filmmaker Juan Luis Buñuel, eldest son of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel. She is fascinated by cultural ties between Portugal and Japan (her other specialty).
Dr. Ehrlich has been a Visiting Faculty member of Duke University, Associate Professor Emerita at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), and Visiting Faculty on two Semester-at-Sea voyages.
You can learn more about Dr. Ehrlich at http://braidednarrative.com/bio
Cameron Watson
Originally from the UK, but having traveled extensively all over the world from an early age with his family, Cameron Watson is a writer, translator, copyeditor, and teacher. He went to graduate school in the United States and has a PhD in Basque Studies, with an emphasis in History. He taught Basque and Spanish history as well as that of modern Europe at the University of Nevada, Reno, and he has also been a visiting professor at several universities in Spain.
He has lived in Andalusia and currently resides in the Basque Country, where he divides his time between freelance work in academic publishing and teaching on studies abroad programs for different US universities. He is the author of the definitive text in English on modern Basque history as well as several other books and articles.
He speaks Spanish, Basque, and French and his interests include Basque history and culture and, more broadly, the complex issue of diverse Iberian identities through history: such issues include, for example, the Islamic legacy in Andalusian culture, the central place of Andalusia in the creation of Spanish national identity, and the recent controversy over Catalan claims to independence. If one historical moment came to define the thorny issue of national identity in Spain, it was the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, a topic he has studied inn some depth and a conflict whose ramifications persist to this day.
Nicholas Jones
Nicholas R. Jones (Yale University) is the former King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center’s Scholar-in-Residence at New York University (2021-2022). He is the author of the prize-winning Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain (Penn State University Press, May 2019) and co-editor of Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology (Palgrave, December 2018) and Pornographic Sensibilities: Imagining Sex and the Visceral in Premodern and Early Modern Spanish Cultural Production (Routledge, January 2021) with Chad Leahy. Jones also co-edits The Routledge Critical Junctures in Global Early Modernities book series with Derrick Higginbotham. Jones’s research has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as has held visiting professorships at Georgetown University and New York University. His new, single-authored book, Cervantine Blackness, will be published in November 2024 by Penn State University Press.
Dianne Konz
Since 1992, Dianne Konz has led several Smithsonian Journeys groups to Spain and Portugal. She has taught Spanish literature, language, and civilization at the University of Texas at Austin and at The George Washington University. She has also lectured and published studies on Spanish and Latin American literature, and Spanish culture. Dianne's enthusiasm for Iberia grew from her experiences living and studying in Madrid. Her particular passion is the integration of the cultural arts in the context of their time. She approaches art and architecture, literature, music, and gastronomy as a reflection of a country's history, politics, and geography. Dianne's teachings of Spanish history and civilization include the Moorish and Islamic periods invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iberia, and the rich cultural heritage of the Islamic presence in Iberia.