Spain at War

In a country so decisively shaped by armed conflict, and where the army has often played a prominent social and political role, the military history of Spain has only recently received properly critical attention. One reason for this lies with the experience of two dictatorships in the twentieth century, which made the study of military history appear inherently reactionary. In addition, the many colonial and internal struggles in which Spain has mainly been involved since the early nineteenth century encouraged an approach to these wars that emphasised their political and ideological, rather than essentially military, nature. Finally, the involvement of outside powers in most of these conflicts meant that their international dimensions often received most attention—strikingly so in the case of the Spanish Civil War of 1936–9, which was sometimes viewed as a proxy war undertaken by the European powers. Nevertheless, the military aspects of that struggle have increasingly been addressed, with important studies appearing in recent years covering matters such as individual battles, the war in the air and at sea, the nature of the opposing armies and their leaderships, and the experiences of combatants

Colonialism · Democracy · Dictatorship · Economic history · Ideology · Military history · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Reactionary · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · Law · Media, Journalism, and Communication History · Spanish History and Politics