The Splintering of Spain
Cultural History and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

This 2005 book explores the ideas and culture surrounding the cataclysmic civil war that engulfed Spain from 1936 to 1939.

Chris Ealham (Edited by), Michael Richards (Edited by)

9780521173209, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 April 2011

312 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

"...a very useful collection for specialists."
--Nathanael Greene, Wesleyan University, History: Review of New Books

This 2005 book explores the ideas and culture surrounding the cataclysmic civil war that engulfed Spain from 1936 to 1939. It features specially commissioned articles from leading historians in Spain, Britain and the US which examine the complex interaction of national and local factors, contributing to the shape and course of the war. They argue that the 'splintering of Spain' resulted from the myriad cultural cleavages of society in the 1930s that are investigated here at both local and national levels. Thus, this book tends to see the civil war less as a single great conflict between two easily identifiable sets of ideas, social classes or ways of life than historians have previously done. The Spanish tragedy, at the level of everyday life, was shaped by many tensions, both those that were formally political and those that were to do with people's perceptions and understanding of the society around them.

1. History, memory and the Spanish civil war: recent perspectives Chris Ealham and Michael Richards
Part I. Overviews: Violence, Nationalism and Religion: 2. The symbolism of violence during the Second Republic in Spain, 1931–1936 Eduardo Gonzalez Calleja
3. Nations in arms against the invader: on nationalism discourses during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9 Xose-Manoel Núnez Seixas
4. 'The keys of the Kingdom': religious violence in the Spanish Civil War, July–August 1936 Mary Vincent
Part II. Republican Political and Cultural Projects: 5. Catalan populism in the Spanish civil war Enric Ucelay- Da Cal
6. The myth of the maddened crowd: class, culture and space in the revolutionary project in Barcelona 1936–37 Chris Ealham
7. The culture of empowering in Gijón, 1936–37 Pamela Radcliff
Part III. Identities on the Francoist Side: 8. Old symbols, new meanings: mobilising the rebellion in the summer of 1936 Rafael Cruz Martinez
9. 'Spain's Vendee': Carlist identity in Navarre as a mobilising model Francisco Javier Caspistegui
10. 'Presenting arms to the Blessed Sacrament': civil war and Semana Santa in the city of Málaga, 1936–39 Michael Richards.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]