In what sense is power a magnificent beast? Michel Foucault does not think of it as a cold monster or a leviathan, in the manner of Nietzsche or Hobbes, but as a set of devices that must be analyzed to see how they work, what they produce, what their speeches and practices are. Now, when and why does Foucault begin to take an interest in power? Through interviews, lectures and interventions for the most part unpublished or inaccessible in Spanish, this volume clarifies the political circumstances and personal concerns that are at the origin of the author’s books and courses, and allows them to be placed within the framework of a theoretical elaboration in constant mutation. In these seemingly “lateral” writings, Foucault clearly relates knowledge and struggles: thus, for example, it reviews the role of the police, the interpretations of terrorism and political violence, the dynamics of nationalisms, the medicalization of society, the situation of prison institutions. From these texts arises a Foucault often colloquial, which articulates its ideas at the intersection between scholarship and that daily life that emerges from television programs, from the reading of newspapers or from the specific events in which it has decided to intervene. The selection criteria for the texts gathered here incorporate the new reading horizons opened by the recently published Foucault works. In this sense, the present volume seeks to function as a bridge between his courses and his books, as well as between his research and the present. Power, a magnificent beast initiates an open series, which will undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of Foucaultian thought.