Ronald Fraser (1)Besprekingen

‘Recuérdalo tú y recuérdalo a otros’, el gran libro para entender la Guerra Civil, Guillermo Altares, El País 16.02.2024: https://elpais.com/cultura/2023-02-16/recuerdalo-tu-y-recuerdalo-a-otros-el-gran...

A sociological study of the roots of the Guerrillas of the Peninsula, with a lot of statistics on the Spanish Society of the time. There is not much romance but the author constructed databases relating to over 700 of the men engaged in Guerillas' activities. The prose style is professional academic grade but not compelling. If you want some idea of the social structure of the guerrilla partidas this is the book for you. The maps are clustered at the front and several are useful. They are xeroxable for handy reference. There are text footnotes at the bottoms of pages, some useful, and the bibliographic citations are at the end. A book to be read for completeness, and it's pretty accessible to the chapter reader for essays.

This has to be one of the key books for anyone studying the Spanish Civil War. Fraser concentrates on how the war affected ordinary people. In terms of background research, outside of Spain itself, he is perhaps the leading authority. He writes well, too.