Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy

Description

A powerful biography of Spain's great king, Juan Carlos, by the pre-eminent writer on 20th century Spanish history. There are two central mysteries in the life of Juan Carlos, one personal, the other political. How to explain the apparent serenity with which he accepted that his father had surrendered him, to all intents and purposes, into the safekeeping of the Franco regime? In any normal family, this would have been considered a kind of cruelty or, at the very least, baleful negligence. But a royal family can never be normal, and the decision to send the young Juan Carlos away from Spain was governed by a certain 'superior' dynastic logic. The second mystery lies in how a prince raised in a family with the strictest authoritarian traditions, who was obliged to conform to the Francoist norms during his youth and educated to be a cornerstone of the plans for the reinforcement of the dictatorship, eventually sided so emphatically and courageously with democratic principles. Paul Preston -- perhaps the greatest living commentator on modern Spain -- has set out to address these mysteries, and in so doing has written the definitive biography of King Juan Carlos. He tackles the king's turbulent relationship with his father, his cloistered education, his bravery in defending Spain's infant democracy after Franco's death and his immense hard work in consolidating parliamentary democracy in Spain. The resulting biography is both rigorous and riveting, its vibrant prose doing justice to its vibrant subject. It is a book fit for a king.

Paul Preston is Principe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish History and Director of the Canada Blanch Centre of Contemporary Spanish Studies at the LSE. He was lecturer at the University of Reading then successively lecturer in, reader in and Professor of History at Queen Mary College, University of London. In 2006 he was awarded the International Ramon Llull Prize by the Catalan Government. Among his many works are The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (1986), Franco: A Biography (1993), A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (1996), Comrades (1999), Doves of War: Four Women in Spain (2002), Juan Carlos (2004) and The Spanish Civil War (2006). He was decorated by Spanish King Juan Carlos a 'Comendador de la Orden de Merito Civil' and in 2007, the 'Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Catolica'. In 2000 he was awarded a CBE.

'An excellent biography ... It reads like a spy thriller ... There is no doubt that Preston is an ardent fan of Juan Carlos, and his compelling style carries the reader with him ... Preston's great skill is to re-create real suspense over the 35 years that elapsed between Juan Carlo's arrival in Spain as a boy and the irreversible entrenchment of democracy in the 1980s.' Sunday Times 'This is that rare thing -- a work of academic history that is also an absorbing narrative. And its great merit is to remind us that at the centre of all the dynastic wrangling, political conspiracy and media speculation stands a man who has often felt very alone.' The Economist 'As with most of Preston's work, his eye for the winning detail makes his subjects quite human and enlivens the world of political maneuvering into something other than dry history.' Washington Post 'The lights and shadows of the life of Juan Carlos are reproduced with scientific precision. Preston's scalpel has been implacable! A lucid, penetrating, accurate book, backed up with an arsenal of facts! A scientifically admirable work that once more sees one of the great European historians flexing his muscles.' Luis Maria Anson, La Razon 'A splendid book which, as an unauthorised biography, offers both a panoramic view of contemporary Spain as well as providing profound insight into the role of a King in the late twentieth century! The book provides a magnificent mosaic to solve the riddle that is the Spain of the last seventy-five years.' Marius Carol, La Vanguardia 'Preston's Juan Carlos is much more ambitious than a mere biography. I must confess that it is a long time since I read a six-hundred page book at a sitting. This is one of the books that, after thirty pages, you just know that you either stop or let yourself be carried on right to the end. It is not only a model biography of the King but also a detailed, quietly erudite, history of Spain from 1931 to the present, rich in anecdotes, written with magisterial literary skill.' Antonio Gallego Morell, Ideal de Granada