Paul Preston. A People Betrayed

Paul Preston’s A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain, 1876–2016 chronicles Spain’s history from the mid-1870s to the present day, with a focus on venality and corruption in the political world. The product of fifty years of research, it synthesizes Preston’s long list of publications dedicated to understanding twentieth-century Spain. Yet A People Betrayed could paradoxically only be conceived in the light of developments over the last fifteen years. The accumulation of corruption scandals affecting political parties and the crown, and the reshaping of the political landscape in Spain, including the emergence of new parties, has led many to critically reappraise the transition to democracy (1975–1982) and the parliamentary system it installed, a transition previously touted as a model for other democratizing states. This volume sits within this post-2011 wave of scholarship and is notably more severe in its treatment of Spain since 1975 than Preston’s previous work on this area.

Democracy · Economic history · Language change · Political corruption · Political economy · Political history · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law