Right-Wing Spain in the Civil War Era: Soldiers of God and Apostles of the Fatherland, 1914-45

Description

Right-Wing Spain in the Civil War Era explores the lives of the leading Spanish conservatives in the turbulent period 1914-1945. The volume is a collection of biographies of the most important figures of the Spanish Right during the last years of the Restoration, the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the Second Republic, the Civil War and the early years of the Franco regime. This book brings together a number of leading historians of twentieth-century Spain. By adopting a biographical approach, the volume aims at providing a new insight of the origins, development and aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Contrary to the traditional view, Right-Wing Spain in the Civil War Era shows a diverse and fragmented Spanish right which, far from being isolated, was profoundly influenced by German Nazism, Italian Fascism and French Traditionalism. This remarkable and innovative collection of essays will be welcomed by students and lecturers of Spanish history alike.

Dr Alejandro Quiroga is Reader in Spanish History at Newcastle University, UK, and Ramon y Cajal Fellow at the Universidad de Alcala de Henares, Spain. He is the author of Making Spaniards: Primo de Rivera and the Nationalization of the Masses (1923-1930), Los origenes del nacionalcatolicismo and The Reinvention of Spain: Nation, Identity and Nationalism since Democracy (with Sebastian Balfour). Miguel Angel del Arco is Lecturer in History at the Universidad de Granada, Spain. He is the author of Las alas del Ave Fenix: La politica agraria del primer franquismo (1936-1959) and Hambre de siglos: Mundo rural y apoyos sociales del franquismo en Andalucia oriental (1936-1951).

The bite-size biographical surveys provide digestible information on the careers of key figures. Students will also gain a window into the political world in which Spanish conservatives and right-ists operated. Key interpretive problems are also discussed, such as how to understand the ambivalence of Gil Robles and the Catholic Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightists (CEDA) toward the Republican constitution. Quiroga delivers a solid historical and historiographical portrait of Miguel Primo de Rivera, the army officer whose desultory political career culminated in a conservative dictatorship that in some ways prefigured the Franco regime. -- Sasha D. Pack, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. * Journal of Modern History *