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Introduction -- Narratives of political violence: the narrative of Las dos Españas and the global metanarrative of terror -- History, terror and myth: ETA, Spain, the state and the nation -- Terror and the state: the GAL, fantasy and the (un)imaginable -- The Aznar years (1996-2004): history, politics and narratives of the Spanish "nation" -- Blame games and narrative battles: the March 11, 2004, "terror" attacks and the March 11 general election -- The Zapatero years (2004-2011): Crispación and the return of Las dos Españas -- The beginning and the end of the ETA peace process (2006-2007): between dialogue and Engaño -- The semantics and rhetoric of victims of terrorism groups -- From terror to crisis -- Conclusion

In January 2019, 30 leading European intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and Orhan Pamuk, pronounced that 'the idea of Europe is in peril'. Their voices added to a general sense from all corners of the European continent that the liberal narratives that have sustained the European Union integration project are under attack. Is it true, as Pamuk suggested, that Europe no longer makes us dream? What would it take to reactivate Europe's ability to inspire? Aligned with Sudeep Dasgupta and Mireille Rosello's approach of queering European culture, I imagine the possibilities that might emerge if we reenergise Queer and Europe with their original radical potential. In my reading of Panos H. Koutras' film Xenia, I ask the following: what happens if we imbue Queer Europe with a grammar of hope instead of a grammar of hopelessness? I posit that Xenia queers the space between the European centre and periphery in its celebration of 'diva citizenship' and in so doing, the film reconfigures a Europe in the present continuous rather than the past and future tenses. Such a reconfiguration widens the scope to imagine new cartographies that map European culture in alternative frameworks. A Europe of Stories, I suggest, emerges in the space that this new cartography opens up.

This article posits that two constituent mythologies sustain and drive the EU integration process. The first is the tension between the twin narratives of "perpetual peace" and "perpetual suffering." The second fundamental mythology of the EU project is the tension between the narratives of Europe as on the one hand "authentic" and as "cosmopolitan" on the other. Both of these constituent mythologies are essential in forming what is emerging as a pan-European, Europtimist raison d'etre. This article posits that two recent novels, the Australian Christos Tsiolkas's Dead Europe (2005) and the French Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island (2006) subvert these two mythologies and in the process undermine the legitimacy of recent works of Europtomist scholarship.

This special issue, Sticky Memories: The Emotional Landscape of Food, explores the profound impact of culinary experiences on our emotional and cultural landscapes. It examines how food, beyond its material form, becomes a powerful symbol in our personal and communal narratives. The issue engages with the concept of 'stickiness' in food memories, where culinary experiences not only linger but also shape identity, resist replication, and reflect complex sociopolitical realities. The narratives demonstrate food's role in memory-making, highlighting the intricate intersections of taste, emotion and cultural heritage.