Spanish Civil War: Non-Fiction Sources

As I’ve been promising, here is a list of non-fiction sources on the Spanish Civil War.

1. To begin with, this is a really great, very short book for those who just want to get the basics of the Spanish Civil War before they proceed to learn about it more in depth.

Graham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction.

2. This brilliant historian recently published a more in-depth volume on the war. Everybody who is interested in the subject has got to read it.

Graham, Helen. The War and Its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long Twentieth Century.

3. Paul Preston is one of the leading historians specializing in the Spanish Civil War. This recent book is so well-researched that it often produces a feeling that the author has written down the story of every single person who was killed in the war.

Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain.

4. Of course, there are still Franco apologists, and here is one of the most popular books by them in English.

Treglown, Jeremy. Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936.

5. In Spanish, this best-selling book has laid the foundations of fascist apologia in contemporary Spain. The author retells the war in a way that positions Franco as the savior of Spain who did not even start the war. Obviously, the author disregards every pit of scholarly evidence to construct his argument but people are buying the book in enormous numbers, so his strategy is working.

Moa, Pío. Los Mitos de la Guerra civil.

6. Going back to reliable authors, let’s turn to Michael Richards. He is one of my favorite authors, and this is his most recent book.

Richards, Michael. After the Civil War: Making Memory and Re-Making Spain since 1936.

7. This is a hefty but valuable volume on the war.

Beevor, Anthony. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939.

8. This is a very good collection of articles on the way Spain is processing the memory of the war.

Morcillo, Aurora G. Memory and Cultural History of the Spanish Civil War: Realms of Oblivion.

9. This is another analysis of the many ways in which the war is still present in Spain today.

Gómez López-Quiñones, Antonio. La guerra persistente. Memoria, violencia y utopía: representaciones contemporáneas de la Guerra Civil española.

The bibliography on the Spanish Civil War is growing, and here are some books that I still haven’t read but totally need to. 

1. Based on the blurb, I don’t have high hopes for this recent book but I will have to read it if only to find out what is considered relevant about the war by the English-speaking audience that doesn’t have a scholarly interest in the subject.

Rhodes, Richard. Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made.

2. This sounds like a crucial volume that I will have to read as soon as possible.

Barbieri, Pierpaolo. Hitler’s Shadow Empire: Nazi Economics and the Spanish Civil War.

3. I started reading this book sever months ago but didn’t have the time to finish. From what I have seen of it, it’s very good.

Cazorla-Sánchez, Antonio. Franco: The Biography of the Myth.