The master of the realist novel of nineteenth-century Spain, Benito Perez Galdos, is the subject of these new studies. The master of the realist novel of nineteenth-century Spain, Benito Perez Galdos, is the subject of New Galdos Studies, offered in memory of John Varey, author of Galdos Studies, the foundational text for contemporary Galdosian scholarship. Eamonn Rodgers describes Galdos's early readership and reception; James Whiston illustrates Galdos's creativity in Lo prohibido; Rhian Davies explores the enrichment of the novelist's language in Torquemada en la Cruz; Teresa Fuentes Peris demonstrates Galdos's radical critique of dominant social assumptions in Fortunata y Jacinta; Alex Longhurst deals with the representation of poverty in Misericordia while Lisa Conde detects a feminist intention in Tristana; Eric Southworth finds rich cultural and spiritual allusion in the same work; Nichols Round relates the deaths of children in the Torquemada novels and Angel Guerra to end-of-century ideological concerns.

The remote, rugged Cabeceras Cofanes-Chingual is one of the last intact mountainous regions in Ecuador and serves as the most important remaining refuge for endangered, range-restricted flora and fauna of the Ecuadorian Andes. In October 2008 scientists from Ecuador, Peru, and the United States conducted a rapid biological inventory and a rapid social inventory to assess the region’s suitability for protection as a municipal reserve. Working closely with local communities and indigenous Cofan, whose ancestral territory abuts the proposed reserve to the south, the teams surveyed the hydrology, geology, soils, vegetation and flora, fishes, amphibians and reptiles, birds, mammals, archaeology, and current human communities. Full and abstracted results of the fieldwork are provided in Spanish and English.