A People Betrayed

A People Betrayed PDF Author: Paul Preston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780871408686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Nowhere does the ceaseless struggle to maintain democracy in the face of political corruption come more alive than in Paul Preston's magisterial history of modern Spain.

A People Betrayed

A People Betrayed PDF Author: Paul Preston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780871408686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nowhere does the ceaseless struggle to maintain democracy in the face of political corruption come more alive than in Paul Preston's magisterial history of modern Spain.

Modern Spain

Modern Spain PDF Author: Francisco J. Romero Salvadó
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350455202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Using a wealth of varied sources, this book is an inspiring and essential gateway to understanding the foundations of modern Spain. Francisco J. Romero Salvadó employs a chronological framework to chart the country's experience, commencing with the Restoration of the Bourbon Monarch in 1874 up to the present day. Modern Spain is a vital contribution to the study and debate of this country's history and politics. It provides a thorough, yet concise, study of nearly 150 years of tumultuous historical evolution. It examines the crisis of traditional liberal politics and the subsequent ill-fated attempts at reform through the military dictatorship headed by General Miguel Primo de Rivera and the progressive Second Republic that ensued. The outcome being three years of tragic civil war, followed by the long 40-year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. It concludes by exploring Spain's successful and surprisingly rapid transition to democracy and the challenges that it now faces in the 21st century. Romero Salvadó uproots the many myths and blatant distortions that have often surrounded the history of Spain. By offering an analysis within a European context, he also challenges the traditional view of the exceptional character of the country, encapsulated in the motto 'Spain is different!' On the contrary, this book so convincingly contends, Spain is a perfect example to show the troubled and often violent path to modernity that western societies had to undergo in their transition from elite to mass politics.

A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain

A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain PDF Author: Paul Preston
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 0871408708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
Nowhere does the ceaseless struggle to maintain democracy in the face of political corruption come more alive than in Paul Preston’s magisterial history of modern Spain. The culmination of a half-century of historical investigation, A People Betrayed is not only a definitive history of modern Spain but also a compelling narrative that becomes a lens for understanding the challenges that virtually all democracies have faced in the modern world. Whereas so many twentieth-century Spanish histories begin with Franco and the devastating Civil War, Paul Preston’s magisterial work begins in the late nineteenth century with Spain’s collapse as a global power, especially reflected in its humiliating defeat in 1898 at the hands of the United States and its loss of colonial territory. This loss hung over Spain in the early years of the twentieth century, its agrarian economic base standing in stark contrast to the emergence of England, Germany, and France as industrial powers. Looking back to the years prior to 1923, Preston demonstrates how electoral corruption infiltrated almost every sector of Spanish life, thus excluding the masses from organized politics and giving them a bitter choice between apathetic acceptance of a decrepit government or violent revolution. So ineffective was the Republic—which had been launched in 1873—that it paved the way for a military coup and dictatorship, led by Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1923, exacerbating widespread profiteering and fraud. When Rivera was forced to resign in 1930, his fall brought forth a succession of feeble governments, stoking rancorous tensions that culminated in the tragic Spanish Civil War. With astonishing detail, Preston describes the ravages that rent Spain in half between 1936 and 1939. Tracing the frightening rise of Francisco Franco, Preston recounts how Franco grew into Spain’s most powerful military leader during the Civil War and how, after the war, he became a fascistic dictator who not only terrorized the Spanish population through systematic oppression and murder but also enriched corrupt officials who profited from severe economic plunder of Spain’s working class. The dictatorship lasted through World War II—during which Spain sided with Mussolini and Hitler—and only ended decades later, in 1975, when Franco’s death was followed by a painful yet bloodless transition to republican democracy. Yet, as Preston reveals, corruption and political incompetence continued to have a corrosive effect on social cohesion into the twenty-first century, as economic crises, Catalan independence struggles, and financial scandals persist in dividing the country. Filled with vivid portraits of politicians and army officers, revolutionaries and reformers, and written in the “absorbing” (Economist) style for which Preston is so revered, A People Betrayed is the first historical work to examine the continuities of political unrest and national anxiety in Spain up until the present, providing a chilling reminder of just how fragile democracy remains in the twenty-first century.

Franco

Franco PDF Author: Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134449569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
General Francisco Franco, also called the Caudillo, was the dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. His life has been examined in many previous biographies. However, most of these have been traditional, linear biographies that focus on Franco’s military and political careers, neglecting the significance of who exactly Franco was for the millions of Spaniards over whom he ruled for almost forty years. In this new biography Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez looks at Franco from a fresh perspective, emphasizing the cultural and social over the political. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco uses previously unknown archival sources to analyse how the dictator was portrayed by the propaganda machine, how the opposition tried to undermine his prestige, and what kind of opinions, rumours and myths people formed of him, and how all these changed over time. The author argues that the collective construction of Franco’s image emerged from a context of material needs, the political traumas caused by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the complex cultural workings of a society in distress, political manipulation, and the lack of any meaningful public debate. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco is a study of Franco’s life as experienced and understood by ordinary people; by those who loved or admired him, by those who hated or disliked him, and more generally, by those who had no option but to accommodate their existence to his rule. The book has a significance that goes well beyond Spain, as Cazorla-Sanchez explores the all-too-common experience of what it is like to live under the deep shadow cast by an always officially praised, ever present, and long lasting dictator.

Spain

Spain PDF Author: Raymond Carr
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192802361
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
'The book, which is nicely illustrated, contains nine essays... which cover the history of Spain, still unfamliar to most English-speakers, from prehistoric times to the present. The essays are well written by experts in that particular period and show how many of the trends we usually regard as 'post-Franco' have been about for some time in the ebb and flow of Spanish history.' -Contemp. Rev.From Roman times to the present day, Spain has occupied a significant role in the evolution of our Western world. In this one volume, under the editorship of Sir Raymond Carr, leading scholars present an overview of the political, economic, social, and intellectual factors which have shaped Spanish history over the last two thousand years.

The Coming of the Spanish Civil War

The Coming of the Spanish Civil War PDF Author: Paul Preston
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780416357202
Category : Right and left (Political science)
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


Spain

Spain PDF Author: Stanley G. Payne
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299249336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 634

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Book Description
From bloodthirsty conquest to exotic romance, stereotypes of Spain abound. This new volume by distinguished historian Stanley G. Payne draws on his half-century of experience to offer a balanced, broadly chronological survey of Spanish history from the Visigoths to the present. Who were the first “Spaniards”? Is Spain a fully Western country? Was Spanish liberalism a failure? Examining Spain’s unique role in the larger history of Western Europe, Payne reinterprets key aspects of the country’s history. Topics include Muslim culture in the peninsula, the Spanish monarchy, the empire, and the relationship between Spain and Portugal. Turning to the twentieth century, Payne discusses the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War. The book’s final chapters focus on the Franco regime, the nature of Spanish fascism, and the special role of the military. Analyzing the figure of Franco himself, Payne seeks to explain why some Spaniards still regard him with respect, while many others view the late dictator with profound loathing. Framed by reflections on the author’s own formation as a Hispanist and his evaluation of the controversy about “historical memory” in contemporary Spain, this volume offers deeply informed insights into both the history and the historiography of a unique country. A Choice Outstanding Academic Book Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association

Doves of War

Doves of War PDF Author: Paul Preston
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555535605
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
This beautifully written biographical work depicts the lives of four extraordinary women to paint a vivid, dramatic, and poignant portrait of the ideologies, horrific realities, and long-lasting emotional costs of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

A New International History of the Spanish Civil War

A New International History of the Spanish Civil War PDF Author: Michael Alpert
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312120160
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
'...a lucid and scholarly account of an important and immensely complex subject...Dr. Alpert's command of a broad range of archival material, printed documents and secondary works in six languages is extremely impressive.' - P. Preston, London School of Economics and Political Science It is now twenty years since a study was dedicated to the international aspects of the Spanish Civil War and this new synthesis covering the whole of the era and setting it against major events of the late 1930s is well overdue. Michael Alpert takes full advantage of newly accessible archival sources to disentangle the intricacies of this complex issue.

The Last Days of the Spanish Republic

The Last Days of the Spanish Republic PDF Author: Paul Preston
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008163421
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
Told for the first time in English, Paul Preston’s new book tells the story of a preventable tragedy that cost many thousands of lives and ruined tens of thousands more at the end of the Spanish Civil War.