A Long Review of a Very Short Introduction to the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction.

Go here and vote for my review.

I came to "The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction" as a novice to the subject. I've gleaned some general facts from the Internet but I thought a short audiobook would give me something of an overview of the main events and players of the Spanish Civil War so that I could dig in to the subject with more substantive books. Part of my curiosity was triggered by seeing "There be Dragons," which showed a side of the Spanish Civil War that isn't often portrayed or discussed in the popular media, namely the atrocities commited by the Spanish Republicans.


Unfortunately, this book is a disappointment. Graham seems to have made it her mission to make sure that no one came away from her book without understanding that Franco and the "rebels" were "brutal" - Graham never refers to the opponents of the Spanish Republic as "Nationalists" and she uses the term "brutal" repeatedly in describing the Nationalists and never with respect to the Republicans - and that the great tragedy of the Spanish Civil War was that the Republicans lost. This is not hyperbole; at the end of the book Graham spends time explaining how a modern Spanish historian who has written a book on the "Myths of the Spanish Civil War," which apparently challenges the leftist interpretation, is a "Francoist" who threatens to fill the minds of the new generation with Francoist propaganda. In other words, Graham has a clear interest in the polemical uses of history.

For anyone who approaches the Spanish Civil War without a particular dog in the fight, Graham's one-sided narrative becomes more and more obvious. I found myself listening to the audiobook by making a game out of predicting where Graham would manage to spin mirror behaviors of the Nationalists and Republicans in a way that she could indict the "rebels" and exonerate the Republicans. For example, both sides engaged in atrocities, but the Republicans' motivation arose out of the concrete grievances that they had experienced, while the "rebels" committed their atrocities out of their atavistic fear of change and the "Other." So, really, the Republicans, you seen were entitled to the social change they wanted, whereas the Nationalists needed psychological intervention. That's helpful.

But it isn't and that kind of authorial "projection" is constantly injected into Graham's narrative. Although Graham concludes her book with a long dissertation about the need for nuance and attention to detail, she provides no nuance when it comes to the events. Franco is stupid and brutal; the Republicans are motivated by good ideals and desire for progress. Graham has no interest in the discussing the Nationalist's position - apart from the mention of Franco we never really hear the name of any other Nationalist. The Nationalists are a faceless mass; in other words, they become the "Other" for Graham.

On the other hand, we do get a lot of details on the Republicans. We see the suffering of the war from the Republican side. We learn about Republican leaders. We learn about the history of the Republicans after the war. All of which is good and decent, but not very balanced or nuanced.

At times Graham's polemics seems make her distort or omit key facts. For example, an important thesis to Graham is that the Nationalist coup was entirely unjustified and unprovoked. In making this argument she explains away the revolt in Asturias on the grounds that the people of Asturias learned from the election of 1934, which made the Catholic CEDAS party the majority party, that they couldn't expect to have their grievances resolved democratically. But according to what I've read, the new cabinet was formed on September 29, 1934 - and CEDA was denied its right to form a government - and the general strike was kicked off on October 5, 1934. That hardly seems to be sufficient time for the conservative government to have infringed on the rights of the Socialists; rather, it suggests that the Spanish Socialists didn't view themselves as particularly obligated to play by Democratic rules.

This interpretation may or may not be true, but Graham's pre-emptive strike, which was made without giving the facts, indicates that she is not to be trusted without verification of her facts.

Another example is her apologetic for Socialist atrocities. She does acknowledge that almost 7,000 priests, nuns and bishops were killed in Republican areas, but she excuses the Republicans on the ground that Nationalist coup had caused a breakdown of law and order in Republican areas. This may be a fair point, but she doesn't advise that there was a definite correlation between the murder of priests and the times when Socialists made themselves the only power. For example, in the 1934 revolt in the Asturias, 29 priests were murdered and churches were burned. Likewise, Graham doesn't mention the church burnings and expropriation of Catholic property that occurred before the Nationalist rebellion. On another occasion, Graham affirms the Republican commitment to constitutionality and plurality by the fact that in 1937 it permited Catholics to worship in public, which caused me to pause for a moment and wonder (a) when the Republic had denied Catholics the right to worship in public and (b) if that was viewed as "persecution" which had been a cause of the Nationalist revolt?

Who knows? Graham apparently didn't think that spending time on the history of Socialist persecution of Catholics or the Catholic experience of such persecution was important to an understanding of the Spanish Civil War. As I said, Graham's book is not long on nuance.

At least it's not long on nuance when it comes to the Nationalist side. When it comes to the Republican side, we get informed about the racism of the war, and how there were two African-American volunteers in the international brigades. We also learn that a Finnish-American international brigade member was homosexual and his experience of the Spanish Civil War played an important role in his reconstructing the dynamics of sexuality and politics as a precursor to the "New Left." We also learn that there were all kinds of leftist and progressive organizations, but nothing really about their separate ideologies.

On the other hand, I didn't learn a thing about the "Carlists" and who they were and what made them different from "Falangists." Apparently, very short introductions have time for the only known American homosexual who fought in the Spanish Civil War, but no time for one of the major Nationalist elements. For that kind of information, I will just have to go to some other source.

I'm giving this book two stars with an indication for one star. I give it two stars because it does seem to be a fair example of the leftist/progressive polemical approach to the history of the Spanish Civil War and, to be fair, if you are interested in "A Very Short Introduction to the Republican Side of the Spanish Civil War as Presented by an Apologist for the Republican Side" this book is very good.