Based on a combination of a wide range of second-hand sources with previously unknown archival material from Spain, Britain, France and the United States, this book explores the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 as a propaganda battle aimed mainly at foreign public opinion. It shows how both Nationalists and Republicans used the experiences of previous conflicts such as World War I, as well as that of their totalitarian allies, in order to set up a number of propaganda and censorship services with the goal of persuading foreign -- and specifically British -- audiences of the legitimacy of their causes, and of the need to give them political, military, and relief assistance. The propaganda messages designed by both sides -- ranging from the atrocities committed by the enemy to illegal foreign intervention on its behalf -- are analysed in detail, together with the techniques that were employed to transmit these messages: eye-witness accounts, official commissions, unofficial missions of investigation, documentaries, art exhibitions, etc. As to the impact of both campaigns on the British population, the author argues that their crude nature helped to mobilise both the extreme right and the extreme left, but alienated the great majority, who preferred to rally to the Non-Intervention policy adopted by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. The chronicle of this relatively neglected topic demonstrates not only the utter modernity of the Spanish conflict, but also the origin of some of the arguments still employed by current historians of the war.

Jose Maria Gil-Robles (18981980) was one of the major protagonists of twentieth-century Spanish politics. He founded the CEDA, the first modern party of the Spanish right, and did so during the Second Republic of 193136, at a critical moment for conservative Catholics opposed to several aspects of the new constitution. He sought to create a new legalist, possibilist right-wing movement that could win at the ballot box and demonstrate its strength in parliament. He achieved a great electoral victory in November 1933, but did not succeed in becoming prime minister. The left considered him a danger to the republican regime. In July 1936, after another election and a tense spring, there was an attempted coup detat, and the Civil War began. This brought a definitive end to party politics and, therefore, to the experience of the CEDA. From that point Gil-Robles lived in Portugal, and did not return to Spain until the 1950s. He supported the Allies during the Second World War, and argued for the restoration of the Spanish monarchy. He also played an important role in inspiring new movements for Christian Democracy. This book is an account of the republican period in the life of Gil-Robles. It is the first thoroughly-researched biography that examines in a balanced, well-documented manner the paramount, though still problematic, contribution he made to the democratization of Spanish conservative politics. It responds to certain crucial questions as to why the CEDA was unsuccessful, and what were the obstacles that it encountered in its attempts to amend the republican system. Equally, it also analyses the manner in which Gil-Robles led the forces of conservatism, one based on tenets that were clearly distant from fascism but equally opposed both to Marxism and liberal individualism.

Marking the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, this volume takes a close look at the initial political moves, military actions and consequences of the fratricidal conflict and their impact on both Spaniards and contemporary European powers. The contributors re-examine the crystallisation of the political alliances formed in the Republican and the Nationalist zones; the support mobilised by the two warring camps; and the different attitudes and policies adopted by neighbouring and far away countries. This book goes beyond and against commonly held assumptions as to the supposed unity of the Nationalist camp vis-a-vis the fragmentation of the Republican one; and likewise brings to the fore the complexities of initial support of the military rebellion by Nazi Germany and Soviet support of the beleaguered Republic. Situating the Iberian conflict in the larger international context, senior and junior scholars from various countries challenge the multitude of hitherto accepted ideas about the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. A primary aim of the editors is to enable discussion on the Spanish Civil War from lesser known or realized perspectives by investigating the civil wars impact on countries such as Argentina, Japan, and Jewish Palestine; and from lesser heard voices at the time of women, intellectuals, and athletes. Original contributions are devoted to the Popular Olympiad organised in Barcelona in July 1936, Japanese perceptions of the Spanish conflict in light of the 1931 invasion to Manchuria, and international volunteers in the International Brigades.

Conspiracy, Coup detat and Civil War in Seville, 19361939 dissects the conspiracy against the democratic Second Spanish Republic in the context of the uprising and civil war in Seville, the capital of Spains largest region, Andalusia, and the most populous urban centre seized by the military rebels during the coup detat of July 1936. As the major industrial and economic centre in insurgent Spain, Seville remains central to understanding the rebels repressive project, for this Andalusian province witnessed the highest number of extra-judicial assassinations throughout the war. This is the first book in any language to bring together the subject of the civil war in Seville, the career of one of the most influential leaders of the rebel faction, General Queipo de Llano, and Francoisms most resilient myth. It dismantles, one by one, a series of carefully constructed narratives employed as rhetorical weapons to justify both the rebellion and the murderous rule of Queipo de Llano. The size and importance of the city meant that it became a critical battleground in the struggle for political legitimacy and it remains so for Spains on-going memory wars, a series of public and academic disputes over the historical memory of the Franco regime. Ruben Serem examines the socio-economic context of Queipos great purge, the painful transition from democracy to autocracy and the political nature of the generals rule in Andalusia. In doing so, this work demonstrates how several features of Queipos system of government were enthusiastically embraced by the nascent Francoist state, hence Sevilles unenviable status as a Laboratory of Terror.

'Today with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the Nationalist [nacionales] troops have achieved their final military objectives. The war is over.' With these two sentences, on 1 April 1939, General Franco announced that his writ ran across the whole of Spain. His words marked a high point for those who had flocked to Franco's side and since the start of the Civil War in July 1936 had carried out what they regarded as the steady occupation of the country. The history of this occupation remains conspicuous by its absence and the term occupation lies discredited for many historians. The danger of leaving the history of the occupation unexplored, however, is that a major process designed to control the conquered population remains in the shadows and, unlike many other European countries, the view of occupation as an imposition by outsiders remains unchallenged. This book explores how Francoist occupation saw members of the state and society collaborate to win control of Spanish society. At the heart of the process lay the challenging task in civil war of distinguishing between supporter and opponent. Occupation also witnessed a move from arbitrary violence towards selecting opponents for carefully graded punishment. Such selection depended upon fine-grained information about vast swathes of the population. The massive scale of the surveillance meant that regime officials depended on collaborators within the community to furnish them with the information needed to write huge numbers of biographies. Accordingly, knowledge as a form of power became as crucial as naked force as neighbours of the defeated helped define who would gain reward as a friend and who would suffer punishment as a foe.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 This book provides a comparative history of the domestic and international nature of Spain's First Carlist War (1833-40) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), as well as the impact of both conflicts. The book demonstrates how and why Spain's struggle for liberty was won in the 1830s only for it to be lost one hundred years later. It shows how both civil wars were world wars in miniature, fought in part by foreign volunteers under the gaze and in the political consciousness of the outside world. Prefaced by a short introduction, The Spanish Civil Wars is arranged into two domestic and international sections, each with three thematic chapters comparing each civil war in detail. The main analytical perspectives are political, social and new military history in nature, but they also explore aspects of gender, culture, nationalism and separatism, economy, religion and, especially, the war in its international context. The book integrates international archival research with the latest scholarship on both subjects and also includes a glossary, a bibliography and several images. It is a key resource tailored to the needs of students and scholars of modern Spain which offers an intriguing and original new perspective on the Spanish Civil War.

This book examines the most polemical atrocity of the Spanish civil war: The massacre of 2,500 political prisoners by Republican security forces in the villages of Paracuellos and Torrejon de Ardoz near Madrid in November/December 1936. The atrocity took place while Santiago Carrillo -- later Communist Party leader in the 1970s -- was responsible for public order. Although Carrillo played a key role in the transition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975, he passed away at the age of 97 in 2012 still denying any involvement in 'Paracuellos' (the generic term for the massacres). The issue of Carrillo's responsibility has been the focus of much historical research. Julius Ruiz places Paracuellos in the wider context of the 'Red Terror' in Madrid, where a minimum of 8,000 'fascists' were murdered after the failure of military rebellion in July 1936. He rejects both 'revisionist' right-wing writers such as Cesar Vidal who cite Paracuellos as evidence that the Republic committed Soviet-style genocide and left-wing historians such as Paul Preston, who in his Spanish Holocaust argues that the massacres were primarily the responsibility of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. The book argues that Republican actions influenced the Soviets, not the other way round: Paracuellos intensified Stalin's fears of a 'Fifth Column' within the USSR that facilitated the Great Terror of 193738. It concludes that the perpetrators were primarily members of the Provincial Committee of Public Investigation (CPIP), a murderous all-leftist revolutionary tribunal created in August 1936, and that its work of eliminating the 'Fifth Column' (an imaginary clandestine Francoist organisation) was supported not just by Carrillo, but also by the Republican government. In Autumn 2015 the book was serialised in El Mundo, Spain's second largest selling daily, to great acclaim.

This book examines the most polemical atrocity of the Spanish civil war: The massacre of 2,500 political prisoners by Republican security forces in the villages of Paracuellos and Torrejon de Ardoz near Madrid in November/December 1936. The atrocity took place while Santiago Carrillo -- later Communist Party leader in the 1970s -- was responsible for public order. Although Carrillo played a key role in the transition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975, he passed away at the age of 97 in 2012 still denying any involvement in 'Paracuellos' (the generic term for the massacres). The issue of Carrillo's responsibility has been the focus of much historical research. Julius Ruiz places Paracuellos in the wider context of the 'Red Terror' in Madrid, where a minimum of 8,000 'fascists' were murdered after the failure of military rebellion in July 1936. He rejects both 'revisionist' right-wing writers such as Cesar Vidal who cite Paracuellos as evidence that the Republic committed Soviet-style genocide and left-wing historians such as Paul Preston, who in his Spanish Holocaust argues that the massacres were primarily the responsibility of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. The book argues that Republican actions influenced the Soviets, not the other way round: Paracuellos intensified Stalin's fears of a 'Fifth Column' within the USSR that facilitated the Great Terror of 193738. It concludes that the perpetrators were primarily members of the Provincial Committee of Public Investigation (CPIP), a murderous all-leftist revolutionary tribunal created in August 1936, and that its work of eliminating the 'Fifth Column' (an imaginary clandestine Francoist organisation) was supported not just by Carrillo, but also by the Republican government. In Autumn 2015 the book was serialised in El Mundo, Spain's second largest selling daily, to great acclaim.

'Today with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the Nationalist [nacionales] troops have achieved their final military objectives. The war is over.' With these two sentences, on 1 April 1939, General Franco announced that his writ ran across the whole of Spain. His words marked a high point for those who had flocked to Franco's side and since the start of the Civil War in July 1936 had carried out what they regarded as the steady occupation of the country. The history of this occupation remains conspicuous by its absence and the term occupation lies discredited for many historians. The danger of leaving the history of the occupation unexplored, however, is that a major process designed to control the conquered population remains in the shadows and, unlike many other European countries, the view of occupation as an imposition by outsiders remains unchallenged. Friend or Foe? explores how Francoist occupation saw members of the state and society collaborate to win control of Spanish society. At the heart of the process lay the challenging task in civil war of distinguishing between supporter and opponent. Occupation also witnessed a move from arbitrary violence towards selecting opponents for carefully graded punishment. Such selection depended upon fine-grained information about vast swathes of the population. The massive scale of the surveillance meant that regime officials depended on collaborators within the community to furnish them with the information needed to write huge numbers of biographies. Accordingly, knowledge as a form of power became as crucial as naked force as neighbours of the defeated helped define who would gain reward as a friend and who would suffer punishment as a foe.

Incorporating local, national and international dimensions of the conflict, Gibraltar and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 provides the first detailed account of the British enclave Gibraltar's role during and after the Spanish Civil War. The neutral stance adopted by democratic powers upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War is well-known. The Non-Intervention Committee played a key role in this strategy, with Great Britain a key player in what became known as the "London Committee". British interests in the Iberian Peninsula, however, meant that events in Spain were of crucial importance to the Foreign Office and the victory of the Popular Front in February, 1936 was deemed a potential threat that could drive the country towards instability. This book explores how British authorities in Gibraltar ostensibly initiated a formal policy of neutrality when the uprising took place, only for the Gibraltarian authorities to provide real support for the Nationalists under the surface. The book draws on a wealth of primary source material,some of it little-known before now, to deliver a significant contribution to our knowledge of the part played by democratic powers in the 1930s' confrontation between Communism and Fascism. It is essential reading for anyone seeking a complete understanding of the Spanish Civil War.

Based on first-hand diplomatic, political and journalistic sources, most unpublished, Mexico and the Spanish Civil War investigates the backing of the Second Republic by Mexico during the Spanish Civil War. Significant military, material and financial aid was given by the government of Lazaro Cardenas (19341940) to the Republic, which involved not only direct sales of arms, but also smuggling operations covertly undertaken by Mexican diplomatic agents in order to circumvent the embargo imposed by the London Committee of Non Intervention. This path-breaking account reveals the operations in Spain of Mexican workers, soldiers, artists and intellectuals such as later Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz and the Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros as volunteers and propagandists for the Republican cause. Engagement with the Spanish Civil War also had a profound impact upon Mexico's domestic politics as support for the Republic was equated by Cardenas with his own revolutionary project. The defeat of the Republic in 1939 therefore had far-reaching repercussions for the post-1940 governments. Originally published to critical acclaim in Spanish, the work has been quoted and reviewed by many leading specialists on the Civil War, including Anthony Beevor, Angel Vinas, Santos Julia, and Pedro Perez Herrero. This book is essential reading for students and scholars specializing in contemporary European history and politics, Latin American studies, and all those with an interest in the Spanish Civil War and the Mexican Revolution.

From the moment it began in 1936, the Spanish Civil War became the political question of the age. Hitler and Mussolini quickly sent aircraft, troops and supplies to the right-wing generals bent on overthrowing Spain's elected government. Millions of people around the world felt passionately that rapidly advancing fascism must be halted in Spain; if not there, where? More than 35,000 volunteers from dozens of other countries went to help defend the Spanish Republic. Adam Hochschild, the acclaimed author of King Leopold's Ghost, evokes this tumultuous period mainly through the lives of Americans involved in the war. A few are famous, such as Ernest Hemingway, but others are less familiar. They include a nineteen-year-old Kentucky woman, a fiery leftist who came to wartime Spain on her honeymoon; a young man who ran away from his Pennsylvania college and became the first American casualty in the battle for Madrid; and a swashbuckling Texas oilman who covertly violated US law and sold Generalissimo Francisco Franco most of the fuel for his army. Two New York Times reporters, fierce rivals, covered the war from opposite sides, with opposite sympathies. There are Britons in Hochschild's cast of characters as well: one, a London sculptor, fought with the American battalion; another, who had just gone down from Cambridge, joined Franco's army and found himself fighting against the Americans; and a third is someone whose experience of combat in Spain had a profound effect on his life, George Orwell.

War is sometimes mistakenly construed as the chief impetus for medical innovation. Nevertheless, military conflict obliges the implementation of discoveries still at an experimental stage. Such was the case with the practice of blood transfusion during the Spanish Civil War, when massive demand for blood provoked immediate recourse to breakthroughs in transfusion medicine not yet integrated into standard medical practice. The Spanish Civil War marked a new era in blood transfusion medicine. Frederic Duran Jorda and Carlos Elosegui Sarasoles, directors, respectively, of the blood transfusion services of the Republican Army and of the insurgent forces, were innovators in the field of indirect blood transfusion with preserved blood. Not only had they to create transfusion services, almost from scratch, capable of supplying campaigning armies with blood in wartime conditions, they also had to struggle against the medical establishment and to convince their medical peers of the value (not to mention the scientific significance) of what they were doing. The Blood Transfusion Service of the Republic was a truly international effort, with medical volunteers from all over the world carrying out transfusion work in primitive and often dangerous conditions. All took their lead from one man the young Catalan haematologist, Frederic Duran Jorda, the indisputable pioneer of civil war blood transfusion medicine. From humble beginnings at the outbreak of war, blood transfusion services were created in Spain that would later become crucial in the treatment of casualties during the Second World War and would shape the future evolution of blood transfusion medicine throughout the developed world.

September 1938. Spain's Civil War has been raging for two years, the outcome still in the balance. But rebel General Franco is so confident of winning that he has opened up battlefield tourism along the country's north coast. Jack Telford, a left-wing reporter, finds himself with an eccentric group of touristson one of the War Route's yellow Chrysler buses. Driven by his passion for peace, Telford attempts to uncover the hidden truths beneath the conflict. But Jack must contend first with his own gullibility, the tragic death of a fellow passenger, capture by Republican guerrilleros, a final showdown at Spain's most holy shrine and the possibility that he has been badly betrayed. Betrayed and in serious danger.

Based on first-hand diplomatic, political and journalistic sources, most unpublished, Mexico and the Spanish Civil War investigates the backing of the Second Republic by Mexico during the Spanish Civil War. Significant military, material and financial aid was given by the government of Lazaro Cardenas (19341940) to the Republic, which involved not only direct sales of arms, but also smuggling operations covertly undertaken by Mexican diplomatic agents in order to circumvent the embargo imposed by the London Committee of Non Intervention. This path-breaking account reveals the operations in Spain of Mexican workers, soldiers, artists and intellectuals -- such as later Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz and the Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros -- as volunteers and propagandists for the Republican cause. Engagement with the Spanish Civil War also had a profound impact upon Mexico's domestic politics as support for the Republic was equated by Cardenas with his own revolutionary project. The defeat of the Republic in 1939 therefore had far-reaching repercussions for the post-1940 governments. Originally published to critical acclaim in Spanish, the work has been quoted and reviewed by many leading specialists on the Civil War, including Anthony Beevor, Angel Vinas, Santos Julia, and Pedro Perez Herrero. This book is essential reading for students and scholars specialising in contemporary European history and politics, Latin American studies, and all those with an interest in the Spanish Civil War and the Mexican Revolution.

The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.

"It was bright moonlight -- good bombing light -- and once we had to stop and put out our lights as a Fascist aeroplane flew over. They usually come swooping down with guns firing at cars, especially ambulances. Finally we arrived at a town among the hills about 12.30pm. Here there is a hospital of about 100 beds in a former convent. They expect an attack tonight". In these words New Zealand nurse Dorothy Morris described her journey to a Republican medical unit of the Spanish civil war in early 1937. This book is based on the vivid, detailed and evocative letters she sent from Spain and other European countries. They have been supplemented by wide-ranging research to record a life of outstanding professional dedication, resourcefulness and courage. Dorothy Aroha Morris (1904-1988) volunteered to serve with Sir George Young's University Ambulance Unit, and worked at an International Brigades base hospital and as head nurse to a renowned Catalan surgeon. She then headed a Quaker-funded children's hospital in Murcia, southern Spain. As Franco's forces advanced, she fled to France and directed Quaker relief services for tens of thousands of Spanish refugees. Nurse Morris spent the Second World War in London munitions factories, as welfare supervisor to their all-female workforces. She then joined the newly formed UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, working in the Middle East and Germany with those who had been displaced and made homeless and destitute as a result of the war. Dorothy Morris's remarkable and pioneering work in the fields of military medicine for civilian casualties, and large-scale humanitarian relief projects is told in this book for the first time. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

Valencia has traditionally been seen as somewhat exceptional within Spain: a prosperous, agricultural export-oriented economy dominated by small- and medium-sized farmers. This tranquil image of Levante feliz contrasts sharply with those of rebellious, proletarian Barcelona, or impoverished, feudal Andalusia, with which the CNT and the Spanish anarchist movement is most closely associated. However, this new study shows that Valencia in the 1920s and 1930s was anything but tranquil. The vertiginous growth of the CNT between 1918 and 1920 led to the province being a major target of government repression. The situation there was considered by one Interior Minister as more worrying than in Barcelona. Later, in the 1930s, urban Valencia became the focus of a fierce struggle between hard-line revolutionaries linked to the anarchist FAI and more moderate trade unions, whilst numerous local insurrections broke out in rural areas of the province. Eventually, these two factions would form an uneasy truce in time to lead the Valencian left in the battle to overcome the military coup of July 1936 and secure this vital economic region for the Republican side. In providing the first English-language study of this important movement, Dr Purkiss fills a significant gap in the historiography of the Spanish left. Drawing on a wide range of previously underused primary sources, he shows that not only was Valencia a hugely important source of anarchist support, but that the local movement was far more radical than has previously been thought. He thus provides a vital insight into the origins of the revolutionary and anti-clerical violence which swept the province in the early months of Civil War, introducing us to the 'expropriators' and 'men of action' whose activities terrified bourgeois Valencia in the 1930s. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

When a military coup provoked civil war in Spain in July 1936, many thousands of people around the world rallied to provide humanitarian aid. Britons were no exception. Collective efforts in Britain to provide aid for the Spanish Republic were vast in both scope and effect. Whilst such enterprise has formed the focus of a few previous studies, some of the most dramatic stories of the Spanish war have yet to be uncovered. This book seeks to shed light on the activities of two separate ventures that played important roles in British medical and humanitarian aid to Spain -- the Scottish Ambulance Unit and Sir George Young's Ambulance Unit. The volunteer members of these teams (those who went out to Spain and those who supported them in Britain) earned the unstinting praise of the Spanish government for their selfless commitment to the cause, as well as winning the respect and gratitude of the citizens whose welfare they strove so selflessly to protect. Recently discovered documentation reveals previously undisclosed details of these remarkably altruistic and, indeed, heroic enterprises, clarifying the reasoning behind their creation and documenting their endeavours in Spain -- endeavours of key relevance to the wider history of the conflict. In Spain, the volunteers of the Scottish Ambulance Unit and the George Young Ambulance Unit offered a heartening and inspiring antithesis to the suffering they sought to relieve. They deserve to be remembered for what they embodied during those days of untold cruelty and destruction -- outstanding examples of man's humanity to man.

When a military coup provoked civil war in Spain in July 1936, many thousands of people around the world rallied to provide humanitarian aid. Britons were no exception. Collective efforts in Britain to provide aid for the Spanish Republic were vast in both scope and effect. Whilst such enterprise has formed the focus of a few previous studies, some of the most dramatic stories of the Spanish war have yet to be uncovered. This book seeks to shed light on the activities of two separate ventures that played important roles in British medical and humanitarian aid to Spain the Scottish Ambulance Unit and Sir George Young's Ambulance Unit. The volunteer members of these teams (those who went out to Spain and those who supported them in Britain) earned the unstinting praise of the Spanish government for their selfless commitment to the cause, as well as winning the respect and gratitude of the citizens whose welfare they strove so selflessly to protect. Recently discovered documentation reveals previously undisclosed details of these remarkably altruistic and, indeed, heroic enterprises, clarifying the reasoning behind their creation and documenting their endeavours in Spain endeavours of key relevance to the wider history of the conflict. In Spain, the volunteers of the Scottish Ambulance Unit and the George Young Ambulance Unit offered a heartening and inspiring antithesis to the suffering they sought to relieve. They deserve to be remembered for what they embodied during those days of untold cruelty and destruction outstanding examples of man's humanity to man.

This book looks at how Muslims in Spain have changed legislation linked to religious pluralism and immigration and have fortified Spain's frail history and practice of democracy since 1975. Spanish Muslims have achieved this through active civil engagement and a persistent struggle for rights and for status as immigrants and as citizens on par with ethnic Spaniards. Muslims have interacted with Spanish popular traditions, challenged Eurocentric historical narratives, and used Spanish concepts such as convivencia (peaceful coexistence) and arraigo (rootedness) to expand the prevailing construction of belonging. The Muslim struggle for civil rights took off in earnest in Melilla--with its historic ties to the Islamic Kingdom of Fez up to 1497--between 1985 and 1988, when Muslim residents questioned nativist control of the enclave. Subsequently, from 1989 to 2001, on mainland Spain, Muslims formed independent organizations, pushed for national regularization of undocumented residents, and proposed modifications to immigration laws. A primary focus of the book is on how devout Muslims lobbied to institutionalize Islam in Spain, fought for the right to construct mosques despite heavy nativist resistance, and balanced women's rights in the Muslim community and broader secular context. The author also examines the ways that Muslims have interrogated the memory of the Moor in Spanish history and in popular festivals, such as the Festival of Moors and Christians, and how this has played out in regions with strong nationalist traditions, such as Catalonia. The book concludes with a survey of the writings of Muslim immigrants in Spanish and in Catalan, and how these works have publicized the everyday experience of migration in Spain.

The Spanish Civil War is one of the most studied events in modern European history. Its origins, that is to say the politics of the Second Republic (1931-1936), have been much debated. The republican period has been much idealised and in particular the myth of Spanish democracy beset by fascism, of which Franco was its leading figure, has been much cultivated. But was this really the case? Recently historians of the Republic have proposed a new and non-ideological perspective on the 1930s. Spain's path was at once different yet in many ways similar to that of Europe during the inter-war period. The Spanish Second Republic Revisited brings together leading and innovative specialists to analyse the main obstacles to the consolidation of democracy in Spain and to debate the principal stereotypes of the traditional historiography of both left and right. The issues addressed include: the breakdown of democracy; whether the CEDA was an opportunity or a threat; the centrist appeal under the Republic; how the elections were viewed and conducted; the transformation of fascism; new revelations about the Communist party; the politics of exclusion at the local level; the perceived necessity for repression; new perspectives on the Civil Guard; the role of intellectuals in the Republic; and revisionism and sectarian history. The Spanish Second Republic Revisited offers a new and dynamic vision of why Spanish democracy failed to consolidate itself and why it finally fell into the terror of civil war. The book is essential reading for all those interested in modern European history.

Born to fanatical religious zealots, deeply wounded by an unloving mother and a weak father whom he hated, Norman Bethune struggled throughout his life to overcome deep emotional scars. Sexually inhibited, given to outbursts of near psychopathic rage, this wounded doctor healed himself through healing others. In the mid-1930s, Bethune emerged as a renowned surgeon fighting the twin plagues of disease and fascism. When Franco launched his offensive, Bethune travelled quickly to Madrid, organised a mobile transfusion service and, often under fire, brought blood to the wounded at the front. David Lethbridge presents the complex of Bethune's unique activities and personality as they intersected with history: His engagement with medical, political, and military civil war players, and the Communist party; his cadaver blood transfusion work with the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, Hermann Muller; the profound effect that the Malaga atrocity had on him, and the role it played in his attempt to build "children's cities" outside war zones; his meeting with Graham Spry a high-ranking functionary in the Canadian social democratic party, the CCF; the unravelling of Bethune's romantic relationship with the Swedish journalist Kasja Rothman; the implications of his friendship with Henning Sorensen, a possibly secret member of the Communist Party of Canada, and the circumstances of the conspiracy that led to Bethune's ejection from Spain. The book concludes with Bethune's political tour throughout North America raising funds and public awareness on behalf of the Spanish Republic.