Prof. Paul Preston in conversation with Prof. Helen Graham (Royal Holloway)

Thursday 12th March 2020 at 6.00pm 

London School of Economics, Houghton Street, Old Building, 5th floor, Staff Common Room

Launch of A People Betrayed. A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain 1874-2018 by Prof Paul Preston.

In conversation with Prof. Helen Graham (Royal Holloway).

A wine reception will immediately follow & the book will be on sale at the event.

A People Betrayed is the story of the devastating betrayal of Spain by its political class, its military and its Church. This comprehensive history of modern Spain chronicles the fomenting of violent social division throughout the country by institutionalised corruption and startling political incompetence. Most spectacularly during the Primo de Rivera and Franco dictatorships, grotesque and shameless corruption went hand-in-hand with inept policies that prolonged Spain’s economic backwardness well into the 1950s.

A People Betrayed looks back to the years prior to 1923 when electoral corruption excluded the masses from organized politics and gave them a choice between apathetic acceptance and violent revolution. Bitter social conflict, economic tensions and conflict between centralist nationalism and regional independence movements then exploded into the civil war of 1936-1939. It took the horrors of that war and the dictatorship that followed to break the pattern. The moderation shared by the progressive right and a chastened left underlay a bloodless transition to democracy after 1975. Yet, as before, corruption and political incompetence continued to have a corrosive effect on political coexistence and social cohesion. Sparkling with vivid portraits of politicians and army officers, some corrupt and others clean, recounting the triumphs and disasters of Kings Alfonso XIII and Juan Carlos, A People Betrayed unravels the mystery of why both right and left have been unable or unwilling to deal with corruption and the pernicious clash between Spanish centralist nationalism and regional desires for independence.

Sir Paul Preston CBE is Professor of Contemporary Spanish History at the London School of Economics. He was previously Professor of History at Queen Mary College, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds honorary doctorates from several universities in Spain and the UK. Among his many works are The Coming of the Spanish Civil War (1978), The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (1986), Franco: A Biography (1993), Comrades (1999), Doves of War: Four Women in Spain (2002), Juan Carlos (2004), The Spanish Civil War (2006), We Saw Spain Die (2008), The Spanish Holocaust (2012), The Last Stalinist (2014) and The Last Days of the Spanish Republic (2016). His books have been translated into several languages.

Professor Helen Graham is Professor of Modern European History at Royal Holloway University of London. She has published widely on Spain in the 1930s and 40s, including in pan-European context. She is the author of five books (and is completing a sixth), three edited volumes and numerous scholarly articles/popular historical articles. Her books include the 1995 volume (with Jo Labanyi) Spanish Cultural Studies (Oxford University Press) and The Spanish Civil War. A Very Short Introduction (2005) which, aside from Spanish, has been translated into German, Turkish, Greek and Portuguese.  She has previously taught at the University of Southampton and at New York University and she is currently the holder of a three-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2018-21) for a study of Franco’s prisons, 1939-1978.