Juan Carlos Ríos Martín’s new book revives Andalusian revolutionary Blas Infante

Historian and professor Juan Carlos Ríos Martín has published a detailed study of Blas Infante, the early‑20th‑century Andalusian republican and cultural activist. The work, titled *Blas Infante: Andalucía y Revolución*, draws on a range of sources, including the travel narrative *Tierra de olivos* by Antonio Ferres, whose passage describes a bar in Lucena and the hardships of rural life. Ríos Martín argues that Infante’s critique of large landowners and his vision for a socially just Andalusia were deliberately down‑played after his assassination by the Franco regime, and later reshaped during Spain’s transition to democracy. The book adds to the author’s broader scholarship on Andalusian identity, flamenco, and the region’s historical memory, and it joins his earlier titles on cultural and political history.

The publication aims to restore a more nuanced picture of Infante’s role as a revolutionary figure and to challenge the simplified narratives that have dominated public discourse since the mid‑20th century.