C.W. Gortner in his blog, Historical Boys, had an interesting post yesterday on the popularity of historical fiction in Spain. He found new novels covering many time periods and written by authors from all over Europe. His impressions of the market there reflect the sense I got when I was in Spain last July. Waiting for a friend at the Barajas airport in Madrid, I stopped in the airport bookstore to see what people were buying. I think fully one quarter of the novels there were on historical fiction, mostly about medieval and early modern topics and set in Spain and the rest of Europe.
I thought that was pretty neat.