The Penguin History of Modern Spain: 1898 to the Present

A revelatory new history of Spain, from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first, drawing on a wealth of Spanish-led historical scholarship never before seen in English

’Spain is different, ’ proclaimed the Franco regime in the 1940s, keen to attract foreign tourists. For the most part, the world has agreed. From the end of its ’glorious empire’ in 1898 to the dazzling World Cup victory in 2010, the prevailing narrative of modern Spain has emphasized the country’s peculiarity. Generations of historians and readers have been transfixed by its implosion into civil war in the 1930s, seduced by the valiant struggle of the republicans, horrified by the barbarity of the dictatorship which followed. Franco’s Spain was seen as an anomaly in the midst of prosperous and permissive post-war Western Europe. But, as Nigel Townson shows in this richly layered and exciting new history, beyond the familiar image, there lies a radically different history of Spain: of a dynamic and progressive society that fits firmly into the narrative of modern Europe.

Drawing on over forty years of post-Franco scholarship, The Penguin History of Modern Spain transforms our knowledge of Spain and its politics, society, economics and culture. It interweaves cutting-edge Spanish-led research - never before published in English - and testimonies of peasants, housewives, soldiers, workers, entrepreneurs, feminists and worker-priests, for an original and surprising portrait, which allows us, at last, to discern the country behind the veil of propaganda and romantic myths which still endure today.

Nigel Townson teaches history at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is the author and editor of numerous works on modern Spain, including the award-winning The Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Centrist Politics under the Second Republic, 1931-1936 (2000), Spain Transformed: The Late Franco Dictatorship, 1959-1975 (2007), and Is Spain Different? A Comparative Look at the 19th and 20th Centuries (2015). He has also edited the work of the exiled Spanish writer Arturo Barea.