The Spanish Civil War still dominates our perception of modern Spain

Nigel Townson’s history of modern Spain begins with disaster – or, more specifically, with the Disaster. When an ignominious defeat in the 1898 Spanish-American war lost the country its last major colonies, a crisis of confidence followed, and the ‘Generation of 1898’ set about trying to diagnose Spain’s problem. Since the scope of Townson’s book runs from that year to ‘the present’ (roughly the spring of 2022), there are plenty of crises to cover.

Spain has been unfortunate in its governments. The Penguin History of Modern Spain is a chronicle of ineffectiveness and corruption at the highest levels, and of failures to implement reform. As such, it sometimes reads like a history of missed opportunities. The monarchical Restoration regime proved unable to rise to the challenges of the years after 1898 and was overthrown by General Miguel Primo de Rivera’s coup of 1923, returning the army to its position of ‘political protagonism’.

Authoritarianism gave way to the Second Republic and a ‘wave of euphoria’ in 1931 (sending Alfonso XIII into exile), only for those great hopes to degenerate into civil war five years later. Decades of the repressive Franco regime followed the Republic’s defeat in 1939, ending only with the dictator’s death in 1975. Even the triumphant return of democracy has been marked by economic turmoil, political scandal and violence (the rise of ETA is covered in detail). 

But as Townson, who teaches at Complutense University of Madrid, is at pains to point out, this hardly sets Spain apart from the rest of Europe. Violence, political chaos, corruption and economic suffering may have been features of the country’s 20th century, but they were not uniquely Spanish. Townson diagnoses a widespread tendency to view the country as an anomaly within Europe.