Sarah Watling

The Spanish Civil War still dominates our perception of modern Spain

While obsessing over three years, we’ve tended to ignore the country’s complex 20th-century history as a whole, says Nigel Townson

A Nationalist poster during the Spanish Civil War. [Bridgeman Images] 
issue 08 April 2023

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.

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