María Lara Martínez

María Lara Martínez

Maria lara

 

Dr. María Lara Martínez is a Spanish historian and writer. María Lara is a native of Guadalajara (Spain). She earned her doctorate from the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha with academic honors. Associate and Fellow at RCC Harvard University, María Lara has worked at the Widener Library and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Previously, she was a research instructor at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, CNRS, in Paris.

History, Literature and Communication are her three great passions, and Dr. María Lara has investigated several historical and literary topics within broad international contexts. She has travelled around the world as a researcher and teacher (Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Argentina…).

The veil of promise, María Lara’s debut novel, won the “Ciudad de Valeria” historical novel prize in 2011. Other novels written by María Lara are Helen’s Memoirs and Without the stigma of Eva.

She has also written historical essays as Witches, Wizards, and Unbelievers in the Spanish Golden Age, and Witch passport. Flying on a broomstick, from Spain to America, in the time of Cervantes. These books are the result of her research in the archives of the Inquisition. Dr. María Lara explains the most fascinating chapters of Modern History through a scientist’s balance between reality and fantasy. In addition, the writer analyses the validity of the political prophecies in the Spanish Empire, and she details the role of the amulets in the Habsburg monarchy. María Lara traces, in narrative form, American phenomena, such as the “witches of Salem”.

Without justifying the unjustifiable, María Lara denies certain arguments of the Black Legend. In contrast, the Historian states that Spain was the only nation that was able to stop the witch-hunt during the XVIIth century. And the Hispanic World did it through the application of reason and the covenant of silence.

In 2022 her new book was published: History of the Wars of Religion. Jews, Christians and Freethinkers in Europe, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The book was written during her stays as RCC Associate and Fellow at Harvard University. In this book the author explains the clandestine currents of the Baroque, which prepared the ground for the Enlightenment.

María Lara has a twin sister, Dr. Laura Lara Martínez, who is also a writer, historian and communicator of History on radio and television. Being both are Modern and Contemporary History lecturers at Madrid Open University (UDIMA) they were awarded with a National GPA for History as they finished their degree with thirty-eight distinctions.

María Lara and Laura Lara (las Hermanas Lara) won the Algaba Award (2015) with their book, Ignatius and the Society: From the Castle to the Mission, where they explain, in narrative form, the annals of the Jesuits: from Loyola, their founder, to Pope Francis. The Lara Sisters combines scientific research on History with the diffusion of the Humanities through their own spaces on radio and television. They have written Breviary of History of Spain, Princesses in Jeans. History, meaning and validity of the monarchy and The Yellow Horses. Diseases no one saw coming, among other historical books. Laura and María Lara are Television Academy Scholars and Ambassadors of the Spanish Army.


 

 

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