¿Por qué la Segunda República llegó en 1931 con esperanza y naufragó en 1936 con violencia? ¿Fue inevitable la Guerra Civil española? ¿Cómo se convirtió un golpe militar en un conflicto armado? ¿Cuándo y cómo llegó el general Franco a la condición de Caudillo? ¿Qué papel desempeñó la Iglesia católica? ¿Fue la Guerra Civil una contienda internacional en suelo español? ¿Cómo reaccionaron las potencias europeas a las peticiones de ayuda exterior de republicanos y franquistas? ¿Murieron más españoles en las batallas o en las acciones de retaguardia? ¿Cuál es, ochenta años después, el legado de esta guerra?
es un historiador español, catedrático de Historia Contemporánea de la Universidad de Extremadura y académico de número de la Real Academia de la Historia (España). Ha sido distinguido con el Premio Nacional de Historia de España.
Se licenció en Geografía e Historia (sección de Historia) por la Universidad de Oviedo (con Premio Extraordinario de Fin de Carrera al mejor expediente de su promoción en 1984 y Premio Extraordinario de Licenciatura en 1985), con una tesis de grado titulada: El sindicato de los Obreros Mineros de Asturias, 1919-1930. En 1989 se doctora en Historia (Historia Contemporánea) por la misma universidad, obteniendo también el Premio Extraordinario cum laude, con una tesis doctoral titulada: El gobierno británico y la insurrección militar española de 1936. Durante esos años recibió una beca de investigación predoctoral del Programa de Formación de Personal Investigador del Ministerio de Educación de España, con destino en el Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Oviedo (1985-1988). Durante ese periodo tuvo una estancia de investigación para elaborar la tesis doctoral en el Queen Mary College de la Universidad de Londres durante diez meses de duración (de enero a noviembre de 1987).
Fue becario de investigación postdoctoral de estudios avanzados en el extranjero, correspondiente al Programa del Ministerio de Educación de España durante los años 1989 y 1990, con destino nuevamente en el Queen Mary College de la Universidad de Londres (luego Queen Mary and Westfield College), llegando a ser Assistant Lecturer (profesor ayudante) durante los años 1990 y 1991. Durante sus años en Londres fue alumno del historiador Paul Preston.
Posteriormente desarrolló su labor docente e investigadora como titular interino de Historia Contemporánea de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (curso académico 1991-1992) y en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de Cáceres de la Universidad de Extremadura como profesor asociado a tiempo completo (1994-1999). Desde 1999 es profesor titular en la Universidad de Extremadura y desde 2007 es catedrático de Historia Contemporánea en la misma universidad (habilitado en 2006 por la Universidad de Barcelona). Desde 2016 a 2020 ejerció como director del departamento de Historia de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Campus de Cáceres) de la Universidad de Extremadura (durante cuatro años y medio); donde sigue impartiendo clases e investigando a día de hoy.
En 2017, recibe el Premio Nacional de Historia de España (habiendo recibido, previamente, otros importantes premios, como el «Arturo Barea» de investigación).
En noviembre de 2020 fue elegido académico de número de la Real Academia de la Historia (España),n 1 siendo apadrinado por los profesores y académicos Carmen Sanz Ayán, Juan Pablo Fusi y Luis Antonio Ribot.2
Unfortunately, this excellent book is not available in English.
An excellent history. In the still socially and politically sensitive subject area of the civil war in Spain, Enrique Moradiellos has put forth a detailed history which walks a fine line while not pulling any punches. (Or to add yet another metaphor, he's the guy on the high wire doing backflips.) He manages to create a broad perspective by putting the adversaries in their respective (multiple) camps both historically and ideologically. The result is an impressive basic history which allows the reader to understand the events leading up to the war, the development of the war and its outcome. My only criticism, and this is in the very nature of the 'Historia Mínima' series, is the lack of footnotes and index.
Moradiellos accomplishes his task largely through his organization of the book in which he avoids constant comparisons of the various parties to the conflict. He rather deals with them on their own. This leads to a certain amount of repetition, but far from being distracting, it serves to bring unity to the book.
The first chapter deals with the historiography of the studies of the war since its outbreak in 1936. It is clear that, during the war, purported histories were extremely biased, on both sides. These propaganda pieces inevitably portrayed the other side as inhuman monsters guilty of committing murderous atrocities. Of course, to some extent, there was a great deal of truth and of lies on both sides. Subsequent studies of the war made by writers in Spain, or those in exile, were equally biased. Histories undertaken in other languages may have been more balanced but tended to perpetuate many of the earlier mythologies. Moradiellos does finally cite some recent, well-written studies.
(I would note that neither here nor in the bibliography is any mention made of Anthony Beevor's much read history, The Battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 1939. This in spite of the fact that other influential English language books are discussed. The Spanish language edition of Beevor's book is in every bookstore in Spain I would guess. I can only wonder what such silence means.)
The second chapter gives the reader an excellent overview of the events leading up to the war, particularly during the short-lived Second Republic. I won't go into details but would say that by the end of this chapter, I felt that I had a firm grasp of why the Spanish Civil War occurred and why each of the many groups involved felt that they were on the moral high ground. I was also left wondering what would have happened had the military not launched its coup against the republic when it did. The basic instability of the republic, caused by the many ideologically opposed factions within, suggests that chaos of one form or another was inevitable. We shall never know.
The third chapter looks at the outbreak of the war in the context of the context of the attempted coup by the military. The focus here is on the military. The author looks at the rationales, the planning, the outbreak and the successes and failures of the coup and the eventual divided country. He also discusses the resulting spate of murders and detentions on both sides. It is of note in this chapter that Moradiellos makes a point of the various appeals made by both sides for international assistance for their cause.
Chapter IV is largely a more extended overview of the steps taken by the military to ensure their grip on the territories they held and to begin their battle to seize the rest of Spain. It is of interest that Franco was not originally the leader of the coup and only agreed to participate after much of the planning had occurred. The man originally seen as the head of the coup, and foreseen as future 'Caudillo', was General José Sanjurjo, who was living in exile in Portugal. Sanjurjo was to die in a plane crash, however, on attempting to join the coup on the second day of the rebellion. Franco eventually became the appointed leader and quickly set about establishing himself as the "El Caudillo", "El Jefe" and other titles which were meant to stabilize his role as the focus of power, thus giving strength to the new government during a time of war and providing a centre for dealings with other countries providing assistance.
Chapter V, deals with the developments during the Civil War within the Republican territories. As is generally well known, there was little love lost between many of the factions within the republic. Liberals, socialists, communists, and anarchists all Pursued their own ends by their own means.
Constant squabbling, plotting, and inter- and intra-party violence made it difficult for the democratic government to put forward an organized effort agains t the military rebellion against them. Moradiellos describes these internal struggles such as to make it clear that the efforts of the government were too often focused inwards instead of on the prosecution of the war. Finally, given the pressures from both within and without, the republic collapsed.
Interestingly, the next chapter is about the role played by other European nations in the war. While popular history would blame the machinations of the Soviet Union under Stalin for much of the weakness of the Republic, Moradiellos points to others, particularly the U.K., whose cynical acts of omission were to play a greater role.
It is well known that Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany played an important role in the war. Without their military and supply support, one must wonder if the war would have continued on into World War II. The horrors of their bombing campaigns, constantly evoked for us by Picasso's 'Guernica', are engraved in Western consciousness. But it must be asked, where was the rest of Europe? (And, yes, the rest of us.)
While Italy and Germany were supplying supplies, arms and troops to the francoists, little was being done in support of the Republic. While much is made of the participation of the 'international brigades, made up of volunteers from many nations, these ill-equipped, badly trained militias were in no way the equivalent of the professional soldiers of Italy and Germany. The republic needed strong support which never really came.
The problem for the Republic arose early when the U.K. proposed an international moratorium would on assisting either side in the conflict. The goal was to isolate the civil war so that it did not become a source of violent conflict between the various powers in Europe. With the rise of Germany as a military power, tensions between Germany and the U.K. on the one hand and Germany and the Soviet Union on the other made for an unstable situation for which the U.K. did not feel prepared.
Thus the European powers all signed onto a moratorium and, although a commission was set up to oversee it, the interventions of various countries into the war were ignored. The outcome was that Italy and Germany had 'carte blanche', the Soviet Union played a significant role, France and Portugal dabbled on their respective sides and everyone else pretended that nothing else was happening. The results were disastrous for the Republic, but the general conflict that became World War II was delayed while the U.K. and France made some preparations.
So Moradiellos makes it clear that the enormous death and destruction that arose over the political instability of Spain were not just the result of the military and Franco, the anarchists and the Communists and the Soviet Union, but of all and sundry. Spain was sacrificed to the various parties who had any role to play and no one was prepared to play a role that could have stopped the pain.
The final chapters of the book look briefly at the military course of the Civil War and the outcome.
Moradiellos tries to make a stab at coming up with reliable statistics on death and destruction brought about by the war and its aftermath. By today's standards, the numbers may seem small. But these are human lives. He suggests around 346,000/380,000 deaths during the three years of the war. Perhaps, a total of between 651,000 and 735,000 victims of the war in all of its facets (en todas sus facetas). This does not take into account the hundreds of thousands of exiles.
I very much appreciated Moradiellos approach. He does not attempt to blame. He cites the evidence and leaves the blaming to the reader. If you have read this far, you should read the book.
Estamos ante una obra breve pero muy completa. Recomendable para todo aquel que quiera tener una panorámica del hito más importante de nuestra Historia Contemporánea. En consecuencia, el índice esgrimido es diverso y dinámico. En mi aficionada opinión -y en la de expertos como Julián Casanova-, uno de los títulos imprescindibles para saber y entender la Guerra Civil española.
P.D: posee una síntesis previa sobre la historiografía y la Segunda República muy práctica e interesante.
Una buena introducción para los que desconocemos e ignoramos sobre el desarrollo de la Guerra Civil en España. Este libro es un recurso muy justificado a través de documentos tanto del bando sublevado como el republicano, aportando un contexto social y económico tanto nacional como internacional.
Este libro es un recurso que utilizaría en clases de Historia de todos los niveles. Muy condensado pero con mucho rigor histórico. Muy recomendable, me anima a seguir leyendo sobre el conflicto de la guerra civil en España y a explorar las razones por las que el pasado determina la situación política contemporánea.
Claramente el autor hace un ejercicio de síntesis y muestra los hechos más relevantes de la Guerra Civil española en un libro que se lee fácilmente. No entra en juicios de valor y trata los hechos históricos desde un punto de vista academicista con una amplia bibliografía al final del libro. Creo que hace un esfuerzo para ser lo más objetivo posible. Al ser un tema en el que es fácil entrar en sectarismos, me parece que este libro hace un buen trabajo para dar una visión global de lo acontecido.
Un libro que aporta muchísima información sobre el conflicto desde la voz de un narrador que se mantiene increíblemente neutral. Destacaría como interesante el capítulo sobre la dimensión internacional del conflicto. También todo lo relativo al desastre de la organización defensiva de la República (aunque muy triste de leer...). Como parte negativa decir que la narración es muchas veces lenta y reiterativa. Además, tanto detalle de las operaciones militares me resultó tedioso de leer.
me costó mucho calificar este libro. Tal vez un 2 y 1/2. Está bien escrito, pero hasta ahí. Siendo un tema muy denso para las personas que no lo conocemos podría haberlo escrito en forma más interesante, comunicativa, entretenida. Su neutralidad, me pareció una pose, que me recordó a la sensación de cuando uno bebe agua pensando que es vino..
Obra perfecta para los que no quieren meterse en tochos de 1500 páginas, aunque al final se sacrifique algo de profundidad.
Me ha parecido un resumen muy bueno y he aprendido bastante, pero me ha faltado conocer un poco más la perspectiva del ciudadano de a pie en lugar de centrarse tanto en los directivos de ambos mandos. Supongo que sería complicado mantener una objetividad decente.
Muy contento con él. Claro y muy ordenado, aunque quizás algo repetitivo por haber querido hacer cada capítulo tan independiente. Por otro lado, no viene mal de todas formas para refrescar continuamente lo que se ha dicho.
Necesario para ter un base! eu linmo en segundo de carreira, encantoume está escrito para ser entendido e faite participe de novos detalles e anécdotas que non coñecía con anterioridade. É un libro que recomendaría a todos os meus amigos!
Great read! The book gave a lot of important details about the dynamics on each side of the war. It was also interesting to read about the politics surrounding the conflict and how it impacted World War II.
Una magnífica síntesis de la guerra civil, cuyo mayor valor radica no en el relato de los acontecimientos, sino en su explicación. No creo que este libro sea el idóneo para aproximarse a lo que pasó durante la guerra si uno no tiene mucha idea a priori, pero si lo que se busca es entenderla (lo cual no es fácil teniendo en cuenta todos sus actores, movimientos, partidos, siglas, intereses, motivaciones, implicaciones internacionales…) me parece lo mejor que ha pasado por mis manos. Su lectura es ágil, entretenida y esclarecedora. Sin duda de lectura obligada para los interesados en desentrañar los porqués de este trágico episodio de nuestra historia moderna.
Sabía el final y aún así lloré tbh pero bueno, la verdad que es un muy buen libro para empezar con la Guerra Civil desde un punto de vista bastante objetivo. Releído en enero que nunca viene mal