Menocal’s book is very focused on a chronological recounting of power. Whether it was political, technological, or cultural, she offers in her first chapters an overview of which rulers and cities held significance in their time. Kamen, on the other hand, is concerned with identity, and how people choose to understand the past. In speaking of Catalonia, he writes “In the earlier phase, the refrain among Catalanists had been ‘Catalonia is the patria, Spain is the nation.’ In the later phase, the refrain was: ‘Catalonia is the nation, Spain is the state.’” (Kamen 25). Kamen gives less of an idea, in this chapter at least, of what events occurred on the Iberian Peninsula, but rather how their various identities developed in relation to one another, and how it is significant that many of these identities are based on historical myths. While the history may be myth, the identities that have developed are very real to this day. Menocal, contrastingly, opens her book with a brief history of power, rather than identity, in Spain.
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