Analysis Of The Spanish Labyrinth

Andy Cabrera

1/13/14

The Spanish Civil War

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Soical and Political Backgrounds of the Spanish Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

The history of modern Spain is filled with discourse on the nature of government and its relation to its people. Nowhere is that discourse more violently showcased than during Spain’s civil war. Gerald Brenan analyses the origins of the brutal war that gripped the nation between 1936-1939. Brenan’s book is an excellent account of the wars beginnings because it was written immediately after in 1943. Brenan’s analysis is a true history of the war but more of an interpretation of its origins. Throughout the book, he focuses on different political and social groups; giving the reader details into their ideology and daily life. At certain points the monograph seems to be traveling backwards in time. At one point the author is discussing political reform during the twentieth century, then going back and reviewing conflict during the nineteenth century.

The book is divided into several sections, each focusing a unique aspect of the war and Spanish society. The first part begins in the late nineteenth century; here Brenan outlines the foundations for the political instability that would engulf Spain in the next century. Brenan discusses the difficulty with which the Spanish government has governed its peninsular regions. He attributes this difficulty to the extremely top heavy form of government that existed and to the psudo-mediveal system that continued in many regions. In this section he plays close attention to a semi feudal system in the region of Andalusia. Brenan discusses the extreme poverty in Spain’s southern region and c...

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... during the 1933 elections.

Brenan concludes with a political overview of what happened during the war. He charts the rise of Franco and gives reasons for why he was successful. The author claims that it was due to foreign intervention from Italy and Germany that led to his success. It may be worth looking back at this conclusion due to the fact that Brenan wrote during and not after the war. This monograph stands as a great source of material for understanding the origins of the war. Although sometimes confusing due to his back and forth method of writing, Brenan still presents a unique perspective on modern Spanish history by incorporating politics, economics and geography. He paints a picture of a an independent people who desperately sought to modernize and seize control of there own destiny but were hindered due to economic crisis and political fragmentation.