The Invention Of... Folgen

September 11th in Barcelona is celebrated annually as the national day of Catalonia. This year more than a million people marched through the city, waving their distinctive flags - many want independence from Madrid. This is clearly a critical moment in Spanish history, but the mood of separation is not new. In The Invention of Spain, Misha Glenny explores flashpoints and fragmentation in the Spanish monarchy's territorial possessions - from the revolts of Catalonia in both 1640 and 1714, to the emergence of the United Provinces, or the Dutch, as a nation separate and free from their Habsburg overlords. "This was a David and Goliath struggle. The Spanish army was indisputably the strongest in Europe," says Ben Kaplan of UCL. ""For this smattering of rebels living in this marshy bogland was adventurous at best, and suicidal at worst."With contributions from Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo, Felipe Fernandez Armesto and Sir John Elliott. Misha Glenny is a winner of a Sony gold. Producer Miles Warde previously collaborated with him on The Invention of Germany.

Catalonia, Castille, Galicia and the Basques ... it's been said that many of Spain's problems come from the pretence that she is one country. In The Invention of Spain Misha Glenny explores whether this is true. Three documentaries, from 1492 to 1898, from Columbus to El Desastre, tell the story of the rise and fall of an empire. But they also reveal the fractured state of a nation, both in history and now. "I can't imagine Spain ever cohering - if it did it wouldn't be Spain." Felipe Fernandez Armesto.The first programme begins in the annus mirabilis of 1492, when the last Moors in Granada surrendered, Columbus discovered the New World, and an edict was published expelling the Jews. This year is frequently cited as the birth of modern Spain, but behind the national mythology another story lurks. "The birth of this embryonic Spain is rooted in the idea of exclusion," says one contributor, "and that is a very nasty thing to have in your history."Misha Glenny is a former BBC correspondent and winner of a Sony gold. Producer Miles Warde has previously collaborated with Misha Glenny on The Invention of Germany, Garibaldi's Grand Scheme and The Alps. Contributors include Sir John Elliott, Inigo Gurruchaga of El Correo newspaper, Mia Rodriguez Salgado and Madrid MP Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo.

Misha Glenny concludes the Invention of Italy in the Alps and Trieste, ambitious targets of Italian warmongers in the First World War."You need to think of the fighting taking place in Flanders applied in the rocky limestone of the Alps .... the Italians at the bottom, the Austrians at the top." Mark Thompson, The White WarIn 1915 Italy entered the Great War on the side of France, Britain and Russia. The aim ? To gain new territory up north to the watershed of the Alps; and also east over the Adriatic into parts of what later became Yugoslavia. The price of these ambitions - nearly three quarters of a million Italians dead in the snow and rock. They died upholding the nationalist belief this new Italian nation - barely fifty years old - needed to spill blood to prove itself, to demonstrate they were not just waiters and ice cream salesmen. Chief among the characters who dragged Italy into war was a poet, Gabrielle d'Annunzio, bald as a coot and a great seducer of Italian women, and Italian minds. In the third and final Invention of Italy, Misha Glenny travels along the frontline, from Trieste via alpine trenches to Lake Garda, where d'Annunzio's Vittoriale degli Italiani attempted to create an Italian fighting tradition by dragging a battleship up the hill and setting it among ornamental gardens. With expert contributions from Joze Serbec of the Kobarid museum in Slovenia; Lucy Hughes-Hallet, author of The Pike, the autobiography of d'Annunzio shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; plus Simon Winder, David Gilmour, David Laven, and Mark Thompson, author The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front.