"Stanley Black and Alvaro Jaspe offer a fresh look at Spain's dynamic transition from pariah state to key European Union player. The book covers the historical, political, cultural and social events that have shaped Spain's evolution from the end of the Spanish Civil War through to the aftermath of the March 2004 Madrid bombing and the early years of the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero"--Provided by publisher.

The Spanish Civil War, begun in July 1936, was a preliminary round of World War II. Hitler's and Mussolini's cooperation with General Franco resulted in the Axis agreement of October 1936 and the subsequent Pact of Steel of May 1939, immediately following the end of the Civil War. This study presents comprehensive documentation of Hitler's use of the upheaval in Spain to strengthen the Third Reich diplomatically, ideologically, economically, and militarily. While the last great cause drew all eyes to Western Europe and divided the British and especially the French internally, Hitler could pursue territorial gains in Eastern Europe. This book, based on little-known German records and recently opened Spanish archives, fills a major gap in our understanding of one of the 20th century's most significant conflicts. Its comprehensive treatment of German-Spanish relations from 1936 through 1939, bringing together diplomatic, economic, military, and naval aspects, will be of great value to specialists in European diplomacy and the political economy of Nazi imperialism, as well as to all students of the Spanish Civil War.

This compelling volume re-examines the topic of economic growth in Europe after the Second World War. The contributors approach the subject armed not only with new theoretical ideas, but also with the experience of the 1980s on which to draw. The analysis is based on both applied economics and on economic history. Thus, while the volume is greatly informed by insights from growth theory, emphasis is given to the presentation of chronological and institutional detail. The case study approach and the adoption of a longer-run perspective than is normal for economists allow new insights to be obtained. As well as including chapters that consider the experience of individual European countries, the book explores general European institutional arrangements and historical circumstances. The result is a genuinely comparative picture of post-war growth, with insights that do not emerge from standard cross-section regressions based on the post-1960 period.

An open-minded and clear-eyed reexamination of the cultural artifacts of Franco's Spain True, false, or both? Spain's 1939-75 dictator, Francisco Franco, was a pioneer of water conservation and sustainable energy. Pedro Almodóvar is only the most recent in a line of great antiestablishment film directors who have worked continuously in Spain since the 1930s. As early as 1943, former Republicans and Nationalists were collaborating in Spain to promote the visual arts, irrespective of the artists' political views. Censorship can benefit literature. Memory is not the same thing as history. Inside Spain as well as outside, many believe-wrongly-that under Franco's fascist dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or shown. In his groundbreaking new book, Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936, Jeremy Treglown argues that oversimplifications like these of a complicated, ambiguous actuality have contributed to a separate falsehood: that there was and continues to be a national pact to forget the evils for which Franco's side (and, according to this version, his side alone) was responsible. The myth that truthfulness was impossible inside Franco's Spain may explain why foreign narratives (For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homage to Catalonia) have seemed more credible than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de España was, as its Spanish name asserts, Spain's own war, and in recent years the country has begun to make a more public attempt to "reclaim" its modern history of fascism. How it is doing so, and the role played in the process by notions of historical memory, are among the subjects of this wide-ranging and challenging book. Franco's Crypt reveals that despite state censorship, events of the time were vividly recorded. Treglown looks at what's actually there-monuments, paintings, public works, novels, movies, video games-and considers, in a captivating narrative, the totality of what it shows. The result is a much-needed reexamination of a history we only thought we knew.

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

The tragedy that devastated Spain for 33 months from July 1936 to April 1939, was, first and foremost, a brutal fratricidal conflict, the product of the fatal clash between diametrically opposed views of Spain and an attempt to settle crucial issues which had divided Spaniards for generations: agrarian reform, recognition of the identity of the historical regions (Catalonia, the Basque Country), and the roles of the Catholic Church and the armed forces in a modern state. Being a war between Spaniards, it was particularly brutal, but it was also part of the broader move toward war in Europe and thus sucked in many “volunteers” from abroad. And it left a deep imprint since General Francisco Franco remained at the helm of the country until his death in 1975. The Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Civil war covers the history of the war, first through a long chronology, which highlights the major steps from the incubation to the conclusion. The overall situation is summed up in the introduction. Then the dictionary section fleshes it out, with over 600 entries on persons, places, events, institutions, battles, and campaigns. More reading can be found in an extensive bibliography. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Spanish Civil War.

The first comprehensive study of famine in Franco's Spain.