SPAIN AT WAR

LEADING INTERNATIONAL HISTORIANS FROM TOKYO TO CALIFORNIA BRING TO LIGHT THE INTERACTION OF SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCES IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

Author: James Matthews (editor) Publisher: Bloomsbury Price: £28.99 Released: March 2021

The Spanish Civil War is customarily written off as a military action involving insurgent army units allied with the Falange and other reactionary forces, waging war against a legitimately-elected socialist-led government, albeit infested with communist conspirators. James Matthews takes the reader into another realm, often overlooked in the literally thousands of works published on this conflict.

“Historians of Spain in the 20th century have focused relatively little on the interaction of society, culture and the armed forces, even in the period that has attracted most attention,” says Matthews. This shortcoming is addressed by bringing together the writings of 13 outstanding historians and specialists, who examine broad-ranging and hitherto little-explored issues. These include the Francoist doctrine of ‘martial masculinity’ and ‘turning boys into men’, the role of social work during the war, political economies and monetary policies, desertion and shirking military duties, and Republican spies in the Nationalist rearguard.

Two particularly engaging topics cover home-front cooking, looking at eating and daily life in Republican cities during the three years of warfare, and the demobilisation of Francoist and Republican war veterans up to 1944. In the chapter covering the first subject, Suzanne Dunai, a lecturer at the University of California, provides a fascinating case study of wartime Republican cities and focuses on what they ate and the increasingly dismal situation of food provisioning. Ángel Alcalde of the University of Melbourne takes the reader into the post-war period, which for many Spaniards was no less dire than the combat years. He shows how a cultural repression of the defeated was crucial in the early construction and consolidation of the Franco regime. Former Republicans were excluded from national life and left many in abject poverty, simply for having supported the losing side.