A People Betrayed

Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Divisions, Spain 1874-2014

de Paul Preston, Jordi Ainaud i Escudero, Peter Noble

"Nowhere does the ceaseless struggle to maintain democracy in the face of political corruption come more alive than in Paul Preston's magisterial history of modern Spain. The culmination of a half-century of historical investigation, A People Betrayed is not only the definitive history of Spain from 1876 to 2016, but an absorbing narrative that becomes a lens for understanding the challenges that all democracies have faced in the modern world. As A People Betrayed demonstrates, Spain's decrepit political system led to defeat in 1898 at the hands of the United States and cost Spain the last of its major colonies. Preston shows how the humiliation and economic degradation following the loss of empire brought forth a succession of feeble governments, culminating in the tragic Spanish Civil War and the rise of Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship. The first historical work to discuss the continuities of political unrest and national anxiety in Spain up until the present, this sweeping history illuminates the vicious political cycle that continues to create a stark gulf between the people and the elite political powers who rule over them"--