This work analyses the Spanish experience of the First World War in terms of the general crisis in Europe at this time. In Spain, as elsewhere, the impact of four years of devastating conflict resulted in ideological militancy, economic dislocation and social struggle. The author examines the slow decay of the ruling Liberal Monarchy during the war years, and the failure of the neutrality policy to save the existing regime. He looks at challenges to the Administration from: · the labour movement · the bourgeoisie · the army · international powers Romero shows a po.

Spain 1914-1918 explores a crucial episode in the history of Spain and of Europe. Romero offers insightful analysis of a society in transition from tradition to modernity, and from oligarchy to mass politics.

This volume describes and analyses the methods Germany used to reinforce Spain’s independence thereby preventing Madrid’s entry into the war on the Allied side. While there have been many studies dealing with the wartime economic histories of Holland, Switzerland, Denmark and Iceland, Spain, physically large and strategically situated has been largely ignored, with little American study of Spanish relations with the European belligerents having been done. Particular attention is paid to the forceful personality of Spanish King Alfonso XIII, who shrewdly used his special friendship with Kaiser Wilhelm II for Spanish profit: he remained a Francophile who shrewdly manipulated the Germans into thinking he favoured their side. At the same time Alfonso fended off the embrace of the Entente.

This work analyses the Spanish experience of the First World War in terms of the general crisis in Europe at this time. In Spain, as elsewhere, the impact of four years of devastating conflict resulted in ideological militancy, economic dislocation and social struggle. The author examines the slow decay of the ruling Liberal Monarchy during the war years, and the failure of the neutrality policy to save the existing regime. He looks at challenges to the Administration from: · the labour movement · the bourgeoisie · the army · international powers Romero shows a politically apathetic population galvanised by the war into fierce debate about belligerence or neutrality. The debate divides the nation and the new political awareness leads to a questioning of the Administrations authority. There is also vast economic and social change, as Spain exploits its privileged position as supplier to both sides of the war. These factors lead to galloping inflation, civil unrest and political turmoil, finally resulting in the revolutionary strike of 1917.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. A sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War, told through a dozen characters, including Hemingway and George Orwell: A tale of idealism, heartbreaking suffering, and a noble cause that failed. For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world, as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa’s photographs. But Adam Hochschild has discovered some less familiar yet far more compelling characters who reveal the full tragedy and importance of the war: a fiery nineteen-year-old Kentucky woman who went to wartime Spain on her honeymoon, a Swarthmore College senior who was the first American casualty in the battle for Madrid, a pair of fiercely partisan, rivalrous New York Times reporters who covered the war from opposites sides, and a swashbuckling Texas oilman with Nazi sympathies who sold Franco almost all his oil — at reduced prices, and on credit. It was in many ways the opening battle of World War II, and we still have much to learn from it. Spain in Our Hearts is Adam Hochschild at his very best. “With all due respect to Orwell, Spain in Our Hearts should supplant Homage to Catalonia as the best introduction to the conflict written in English. A humane and moving book."—New Republic “Excellent and involving . . . What makes [Hochschild’s] book so intimate and moving is its human scale.” — Dwight Garner, New York Times

This is the first book that analyzes the transnational impact of the Great War simultaneously on two countries, Spain and Argentina, that remained neutral throughout the conflict. Both countries were very relevant in the conception of propaganda and policies of belligerent countries such as France, Germany and Great Britain and showed that the conflict had a global influence and affected deeply local political and cultural processes, even in areas geographically distant from the trenches. Within this framework, this book is focused on three aspects that are analyzed dynamically throughout the whole war from a transnational perspective: neutrality as a space of dispute between pro-Allies and pro-German sectors and its relation with local politics, the debate about what positions should be assumed in order to guarantee a world without war, and the polemics on the ideas of nations and supra-nations (Hispanism, Latinism, Pan-Americanism). The conclusions of the book highlight that the radicalization that exploded in 1917 in both countries was fundamental in shaping the political radicalization of the last months of the conflict and the postwar period. As happened in Europe, the Great War did not finish in 1918 and its traces continued in the 1920s and 1930s.

Spain 1914-1918 explores a crucial episode in the history of Spain and of Europe. Romero offers insightful analysis of a society in transition from tradition to modernity, and from oligarchy to mass politics.