As Pagan Spain portrays midcentury Spain as a country of tragic beauty, political oppression, and contradictions, Wright amalgamates at once polemic, travel narrative, history, and journalistic essay. He combines, as well, first-person narrative, eyewitness reporting, commentary, anecdotes, vignettes, and dramatic monologue. Pagan Spain, less a journalistic account of a people and an exotic locale than it is a sociological critique of a corrupt system of government, is a daring portrait of a country in turmoil.