Raymond Carr's succinct and elegant volume is recognized as the classic account of the bloody war, 'brother against brother', which established the Franco regime in Spain. Carr focuses on the disparities in Spanish society, between the classes and the regions, and within these between centralists and separatists. He exposes the pitiful weaknesses of the political parties, which enabled Franco, 'the iron surgeon', to overthrow Catalan separatists and proletarian socialists alike. It was a war in which the riven country of Spain became the battleground of international forces, a war which aroused the fiercest political passions, and which became the vicious preliminary skirmish in the great clash of ideologies fought out in World War Two.

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