Volume 31, Number 21 & 22 · January 17, 1985
The New New Spanish History
By Raymond Carr
Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923–1930
by Shlomo Ben-Ami
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 454 pp., $45.00
Revolution and War in Spain, 1931–1939
edited by Paul Preston
Methuen, 299 pp., $12.95 (paper)
La Encrucijada Vasca: Una vivisección sobre la crisis de convivencia en Euskadi
by Ricardo García Damborenea
Argos Vergara (Barcelona), 250 pp., 850 pesetas
After the intellectual drought of Francoism has come the literary deluge of democracy. The caudillo did not favor an atmosphere conductive to the critical study of contemporary history. His preferred period was the sixteenth century, his hero the monk–monarch Philip II; he built his Pharaonic mausoleum near the monastery–palace of the Escorial. Now the floodgates are open. First, as Francoism fell apart, from the late 1960s onward, many of the books on the recent history of Spain tended to reflect the Marxist subculture of the opposition. Then, as the Marxist enthusiasm of the 1960s withered away and the Spanish Communist party became wrecked by dogmatism and factionalism, what might be called the revisionist school emerged. It includes some impressive scholars. One of the best known is Angel Viñas, who has written important books on German intervention in the civil war, on the 'Moscow Gold' sent by the Republic to the USSR in payment for arms during the civil war, and on Franco's foreign policy.[1] Another major work is Shlomo Ben-Ami's Fascism from Above, a detailed study of the military dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera, who seized power in 1923, and who was forced to resign in 1930, making way for the Spanish Republic.
Review, 2652 words
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