A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain 1874-2018 - Tapa dura

Praise for The Last Days of the Spanish Republic

‘Preston's mission in life is to bring clarity to the confusing tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. This is his twelfth book on the war and its legacy ... [it] is written with the same sober lucidity that distinguishes the previous eleven’ The Times

‘Compelling and convincingly argued ... the story of the final, tragic days of the Spanish Republic has never been told so clearly before. With a keen eye for historical detail and a painful sense of the human lives at stake, Preston paints a vivid portrait of those involved’ Spectator

‘Masterly and intensely moving ... in Preston, author of several award-winning books on the conflict, the reader could not hope for a more sure-footed guide ... Britons today know far less than they should about the Spanish Civil War ... our knowledge would be poorer still but for Preston's indefatigable scholarship, elegant prose and impeccable judgement’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Scholarly and authoritative’ Literary Review

Drawing on more than forty years of research, A PEOPLE BETRAYED reveals the extent of the devastating betrayal of Spain by its political class, its military and its Church.

In 1898 Spain was in utter despair. With the catastrophic defeat at the hands of the United States and a succession of collapsing dictatorships and democracies to contend with, this mounting anguish culminated in the devastating Civil War. So terrible were the Civil War and the nearly four decades of dictatorship that followed it that it seemed as if the pattern had been broken. Indeed, the transition to democracy in the 1970s came to be considered as a model for other countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America.

But the spectacular boom of the first years of membership of the European Economic Community masked the fact that the underlying issues had not been fully resolved. The present crisis facing Spain is the result of an incomplete transition.

A PEOPLE BETRAYED covers the lives of the individuals, heroes and villains who made a huge difference – the dictators Primo de Rivera and Franco, the mass murders of the Civil War, and important statesman such as Manuel Azaña, Juan Negrín and Ramon Serrano Suñer, and rise and subsequent discrediting of the monarchy of King Juan Carlos and the extremists of right and left.

Paul Preston, a specialist in Spanish History at the LSE, argues that there is a curious pattern in Spain’s modern history, arising from a reoccurring disconnect between the social reality and the political powers ruling over it.