A PEOPLE BETRAYED: A History of Corruption

One of the finest Hispanists in the country, Sir Paul Preston CBE has written extensively about Spain and in particular the Spanish Civil War, Franco and Spain from dictatorship to democracy. Here he turns his attention to how, from 1874 to the present day, the Spanish people were devastatingly betrayed by their political class, military and church. The sub-title of this monumental history is 'A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain 1874 to 2018'. He chronicles how violent social division throughout the country has been cultivated by institutionalised corruption and startling political incompetence, most spectacularly during the Primo de Rivera and Franco dictatorships when grotesque and shameless corruption went hand-in-hand with inept policies that prolonged Spain's economic stagnation well into the 1950s. Preston looks back to the years prior to 1923 when electoral corruption excluded the masses from organised politics, giving them a choice between apathetic acceptance and violent revolution. Bitter social divisions, economic tensions and conflict between centralist nationalism and regional independence movements then exploded into the Civil War of 1936-39. The horrors of that war and the dictatorship that followed broke the pattern. The moderation shared by the progressive right and a chastened left underlay a bloodless transition to democracy after 1975 yet as before, corruption and political incompetence continued to have a corrosive effect, and still does to this day. The history sparkles with vivid portraits of politicians and army officers, some corrupt and others clean, and the triumphs and disasters of kings Alfonso XIII and Juan Carlos. A work of deep historical scholarship superbly written by an outstanding historian. 750pp, illus.