<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<records>
<record>
    <language>eng</language>
        <publisher>Journal of Irish Studies</publisher>
        <journalTitle>Estudios Irlandeses</journalTitle>
        <eissn>1699-311X</eissn>
            <publicationDate>2026-07-16</publicationDate>
        <volume>21.2</volume>
    <issue>21.2</issue>
        <startPage>16</startPage>
    <endPage>28</endPage>
    <publisherRecordId>15099</publisherRecordId>
    <documentType>article</documentType>
    <title language="eng"><![CDATA[ Catching on to Europe – Kate O’Brien and Mairin Mitchell on Spain’s Civil War ]]></title>

    <authors>
     
      <author>
        <name><![CDATA[ Martin Tyrrell ]]></name>
        <affiliationId>1</affiliationId>
      </author>
        </authors>

    <affiliationsList>
       
      <affiliationName affiliationId="1"><![CDATA[ Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland ]]></affiliationName>
        </affiliationsList>

        <abstract language="eng"><![CDATA[ Kate O’Brien’s Farewell Spain and Mairin Mitchell’s Storm over Spain were published in 1937 while the Spanish Civil War was still in progress. This essay considers these travel writings in their wider European and Irish context and in the context of the lives and times of their authors. Close contemporaries, Mitchell and O’Brien were first published in the years during which Ireland – or at least the greater part of the island – progressed from being a territory of the United Kingdom to a fully independent state. Throughout the lifetimes of both authors, Catholicism was a fundamental and defining aspect of Irish national identity alongside an official, secular culture based on language revivalism, traditional music and sport, literature and the visual arts. Both O’Brien and Mitchell were active in this culture, albeit critically so and without ever succumbing to insularity. On the contrary, both are European in focus, seeing in Europe a place where Irish people might, as in the past, come to express both their distinctiveness from Britain and the anglosphere, and their commonality with the mainly Catholic or post-Catholic national states of the continent – O’Brien urges that Ireland catch onto Europe, Mitchell suggests that Ireland was never more independent than when it was engaged with Europe.  The recommendation is complicated by the fact that the Europe onto which they wish Ireland to catch was bitterly divided.
 ]]></abstract>
    
    <fullTextUrl format="pdf">https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/3-Tyrrell_2026.pdf</fullTextUrl>
    
          <keywords language="eng">
              <keyword>Spanish Civil War</keyword>
              <keyword>travel writing</keyword>
              <keyword>Irish identity</keyword>
              <keyword>Catholicism</keyword>
              <keyword>Europe</keyword>
            </keywords>
      </record>
</records>