Historians have only recently established the scale of the violence carried out by the supporters of General Franco during and after the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. An estimated 88,000 unidentified victims of Francoist violence remain to be exhumed from mass graves and given a dignified burial, and for decades, the history of these victims has also been buried. This volume brings together a range of Spanish and British specialists who offer an original and challenging overview of this violence. Contributors not only examine the mass killings and incarcerations, but also carefully consider how the repression carried out in the government zone during the Civil War - long misrepresented in Francoist accounts - seeped into everyday life. A final section explores ways of facing Spain's recent violent past.

Bringing the work of Spanish historians to the English-speaking world, this book offers public testimony to the enormous strides made in recent years by Spanish professional scholars in shaking off the reluctance to confront the past that marked the transition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975. It brings together some of the leading experts on the violence of the Spanish Civil War to showcase their latest research, providing a broad overview of the institutional repression and its consequences, while offering up new interpretations and perspectives. The contributors challenge a number of myths fostered by the Franco regime, and kept in place by years of silence.

"These 10 essays by some of the leading and/or up-and-coming British and Spanish scholars in the field fit within the growing challenge to the triumphalist, Francoist interpretation of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the Franco dictatorship (1939-75)...While the chapters are built on primary sources gleaned from the growing number of records and accounts of atrocities emerging after 1975, the result is a highly politically charged volume that comes down hard on everyone from the egomaniacal General Quiepo de Llano, who signaled his bloody ways long before betraying the Republic at the start of the Civil War, to the British diplomacy that kept Francoist repression afloat, and the Catholic Church's role in buttressing the Francoist discourses on prisons, prisoners, and the possibility of redemption through bloody repression. Summing Up: Recommended." - E. A. Sanabria, University of New Mexico, CHOICE "All contributors are worthy exponents of renewed trends in the analysis of state repression and social attitudes towards violence and offer innovative themes and approaches?there is little doubt that this book makes a very important contribution to its field." - Daniel Oviedo Silva, Nottingham University, UK, European History Quarterly "This brilliant collective volume must be considered essential reading 'for historians grappling with the Francoist past.' (...) Peter Anderson and Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco edited an outstanding overview of repression in Spain between the start of the Civil War and the defeat of the anti-Francoist guerrilla movement that ultimately succeeds in 'challenging the Francoist interpretation of the past and in many cases cast new light on that past." - Rúben Serém, University of Nottingham