Blood Of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War

Description

Spain today has been shaped by the outcome of its intensely bitter Civil War (1936-9). This book contains the recollections of the participants - the landowners and landless labourers, factory owners and workers, students, housewives, priests, miners, soldiers, as well as members of all political groupings. The book attempts to explain what civil war, revolution and counter-revolution actually felt like from inside both camps. The contours of the war take shape through the words of the eyewitnesses and the atmosphere of events is recaptured and the tragic essence of all civil war is revealed.

Ronald Fraser was born in 1930 in Germany, educated in England, the US and Switzerland, and has worked on Spanish contemporary history, among other things, for the past 25 years. He first went to Spain in 1957, living in the then isolated mountain village of Mijas, Malaga, to write a novel, published in 1960. Thereafter, dividing his time between Spain and London, he collected accounts of personal work experiences in Britain, first published in New Life Review and subsequently by Penguin. In 1970 he wrote In Hiding: The Life of Manuel Cortes, an oral history of the last socialist mayor of Mijas who had emerged from 30 years of hiding after Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. This was followed by The Pueblo: The Story of a Village on the Costa el Sol in which, through the personal accounts of a representative sample of villagers, Fraser described the changes which had affected Mijas over the previous 75 years - most notably foreign tourism. He spent five years working on Blood in Spain.

Traversing a scarred land that has endured everything and forgotten nothing, historian Ronald Fraser records the memories of survivors in this remarkable oral history... No other volume on the Spanish Civil War can surpass the power of this one. * Time * Fascinating and brilliantly unorthodox. -- High Thomas Fraser has stunningly captured the feel of the Spanish Civil War. It is as close to the truth as we'll ever get. -- Studs Terkel Moving and original...splendid and evocative. * New York Times Book Review * Just occasionally a great and important historical work appears that not only affects our understanding of the events it describes and analyses, but also significantly alters our attitude towards the historical process itself... A magnificent, monumental book, that is quite the most valuable addition to the vast library of books on the 1930s that has been published in the last decade. -- Richard Gott * Guardian *