The Heroic Tragedy: Civil War and Social Revolution in Spain (original) (raw)
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Anarchism, Revolution and Civil War in Spain: The Challenge of Social History
International Review of Social History, 1992
The Spanish Civil War continues to captivate the attention-and inventiveness-of contemporary minds; it was a source of literary inspiration, and in only a few decades has become a field of study in which the flood of new books seems endless. Although Francoist myths and simplified and ideological versions dominated till quite recently, it is obvious that the influence of Anglo-American historiography since the 1960s, the end of the dictatorship, the opening up of new sources and the appearance of studies of local history have dispelled some of the main Francoist myths and have introduced new arguments into historical research. Of course there are still remarkable gaps. But one has to recognize that, nevertheless, it is difficult to find another period of contemporary Spanish history which has aroused so much reflection and confrontation of ideas.' With some significant differences, studies of anarchism during the civil war have followed a similar development. Leaving aside the Communist accounts and the Francoist books (both, for different reasons, very antianarchist and lacking any rigor), it was the anarchist militants themselves * This article is based on presentations given at the Center For European Studies (Harvard University), Princeton University and the New School For Social Research in New York in May 1992. I would like to thank Charles Tilly for his encouragement to publish it. ' The work of Herbert R. Southworth, despite the criticism to which it has been subjected, opened up the way in this respect. See El mito de la cruzada de Franco (Paris, 1963). A general guide to sources may be found in Juan Garcia Duran, La guerra civil espanola: Fuentes (Archivos, bibliografia y filmografia) (Barcelona, 1985). Two recent collections of essays representative of the last historiography on various problems raised by the Civil War are Paul Preston (ed.
The Spanish Republic and Civil War
Civil Wars, 2011
The Spanish Civil War has gone down in history for the horrific violence that it generated. The climate of euphoria and hope that greeted the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy was utterly transformed just five years later by a cruel and destructive civil war. Here, Julián Casanova, one of Spain's leading historians, offers a magisterial new account of this critical period in Spanish history. He exposes the ways in which the Republic brought into the open simmering tensions between Catholics and hardline anticlericalists, bosses and workers, Church and State, order and revolution. In 1936, these conflicts tipped over into the sacas, paseos and mass killings that are still passionately debated today. The book also explores the decisive role of the international instability of the 1930s in the duration and outcome of the conflict. Franco's victory was in the end a victory for Hitler and Mussolini, and for dictatorship over democracy. julián casanova is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He is one of the leading experts on the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War and has published widely in Spanish and in English.
The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, 2018
This chapter provides a broad introduction to the subject of anarchism in Spain and the Spanish Civil War, noting the key developments, historiography and debates in this area.
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Drawing upon a vast array of primary sources, this article focuses on a key period of modern Spanish history: November 1918-April 1919. In the aftermath of WW1 and spurred on by the Allied victory, demands by Catalonia’s political elites for greater autonomy seized the country’s agenda. However, the political tussle between the centre and the Catalan elites ended a few months later with their mutual defeat. The upsurge of labour agitation and the hopes of the proletariat generated by the Bolshevik Revolution combined with bourgeois fear resulted in the question of national identity being superseded by bitter class conflict. This article conveys the thesis that these crucial months crystalized the organic crisis of the ruling liberal regime. Indeed, the outcome of these events proved its fragile foundations, dashed hopes for a reformist and negotiated solution and constituted a dress rehearsal for the military coup of 1923, a clear example of the reactionary backlash which swept across Europe in the interwar years.