Sebastian Balfour

This is a study of the Spanish Labour Movement in Barcelona from 1939 to 1988, with particular emphasis on the period between 1962 and 1976. It explains how the movement, so long the scourge of the Franco regime, became the poor relation of the new democracy it had helped to create.From this emerges a wide-ranging investigation of working-class life and culture, labour relations, and politics in an authoritarian regime. Balfour subtly interweaves all aspects of working-class experience, from architecture to accident benefits.The book thus successfully unravels one of the chief paradoxes of the transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain, and also casts light on the broader issues of labour history in general, and the nature of modern authoritarian regimes. Dr Balfour uses the archives of Franco's secret police,untouched since the dictator's death, and provides a unique insight into the inner workings of the dictatorship.

Labour in Greater Barcelona Since 1939

Dictatorship, Workers, and the City

'Deadly Embrace is not only a well-written and thoroughly documented book but also a necessary and vital contribution to the study of the turbulent and often violent first four decades of twentieth century Spain.' -Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, Reviews in History'Sebastian Balfour's Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War is a solid piece of research following on from his last book, The End of Spanish Empire, 1898-1923 (1997)... Balfour renders fresh much familiar material, with original interpretations of figures obscured by their reputations... he offers an important interpretative revision of the bulk of the campaigns of 1924-27 against Abdel Krim and his 'Republic of the Rif', underlining the calculated use of poisonous gases... his argument is innovative and very convincing.' -Enric Ucelay-Da Cal, Times Literary SupplementDrawing on documents buried in archives for decades and interviews with war veterans, some over 100 years old, Sebastian Balfour demolishes traditional interpretations of the Spanish colonial and civil wars. Throwing fresh light on military cultures, racism, and the experience of the soldier in war, from the early twentieth century to the 1930s, he reveals the extraordinary brutality of the colonial war in Morocco and the export of that brutality to Spain in the Civil War. Above all the author exposes for the first time the story of the chemical warfare waged by Spain against Moroccans resisting the invasions of their lands.

Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War

Deadly Embrace

Trinity College Dublin of the 1960s was an unusual, even unique institution, where students from Ireland, England and farther afield came together at a fascinating time in post-war Europe. TCD then was a small, mainly Protestant university, founded in 1592, curiously cut off from but also a part of an old Catholic city with her `seedy elegance' and `gentle veils of rain'. It remains an eccentric, self-contained world, richly textured and defining for those who embraced it. Trinity Tales explores this milieu as it is refracted through the lenses of its thirty-six distinguished contributors, from Roy Foster, Jeremy Lewis and Derek Mahon, to Donnell Deeny, Heather Lukes and John Stephenson --- alumni who overlapped and acted their part in rehearsal for a life beyond the walls. This book, with its period iconography, is an invaluable evocation of that culture and those players.

Trinity College Dublin in the Sixties

Trinity Tales

The story of Fidel Castro has few parallels in contemporary history. None of the outstanding Third World leaders of the twentieth-century played such a prominent and restless part on the international stage and none survived as head of state for as long. Over almost 50 years, he was one of the most controversial political figures in the world, and his legacy has yet to be fully evaluated. Some of his most cherished plans were realized and are a model for many Third World countries. Yet despite enormous sacrifices by Cubans, his grand vision remains unfulfilled and its continued pursuit is full of risks. The fully revised third edition of this respected political biography provides the first full retrospect of Castro’s remarkable career right up to his illness and withdrawal from power in February 2008, incorporating analysis of: the renewed crackdown on dissidents in Cuba from the mid 1990s on the major geopolitical reconfiguration of Latin America in the late 1990s, and the new Cuban-Venezuelan relationship under Hugo Chavez the Helms Burton Act and the continuing US embargo The Cuban economy in the first decade of the new millennium It also revisits earlier events in Castro’s career, for instance the various assassination plots against him , the Cuban missile crisis and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the light of documents released by Cuba and the US over the past decade and a half.

Castro

While Spain is now a well-established democracy closely integrated into the European Union, it has suffered from a number of severe internal problems such as corruption, discord between state and regional nationalism, and separatist terrorism. The Politics of Contemporary Spain charts the trajectory of Spanish politics from the transition to democracy through to the present day, including the aftermath of the Madrid bombings of March 2004 and the elections that followed three days later. It offers new insights on the main political parties and the political system, on the monarchy, corruption, terrorism, regional and conservative nationalism, and on Spain's policies in the Mediterranean and the EU. It challenges many existing assumptions about politics in Spain, reaching beyond systems and practices to look at identities, political cultures and mentalities. It brings to bear on the analysis the latest empirical data and theoretical perspectives.

The Politics of Contemporary Spain

Paul Preston

Professor Paul Preston

Spain and the Great Powers in the Twentieth Centuryexamines the international context to, and influences on, Spanish history and politics from 1898 to the present day. Spanish history is necessarily international, with the significance of Spain's neutrality in the First World War and the global influences on the outcome of the Spanish Civil War. Taking the Defeat in the Spanish American war of 1898 as a starting point, the book includes surveys on: *the crisis of neutrality during the First World War *foreign policy under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera *the allies and the Spanish Civil War *Nazi Germany and Franco's Spain *Spain and the Cold War *relations with the United States This book traces the important topic of modern Spanish diplomacy up to the present day

Spain and the Great Powers in the Twentieth Century

Reader in Contemporary Spanish Studies Lse Sebastian Balfour

This is an account of Spain's disastrous war with the United States in 1898, in which she lost the remnants of her old empire. The book also analyzes the ensuing political and social crisis in Spain from the loss of empire, through World War I, to the military coup of 1923.

Sebastian Balfour

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