Eighty-five years ago today, Francisco Franco declared victory in the Spanish Civil War. In an interview, historian Paul Preston tells Jacobin about the decisive role that Franco’s sympathizers in the British government played in crushing Spanish democracy.

meow-floppy

interesting if short interview

  • Pluto [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Just finished reading.

    Good article.

    Other excerpt:

    The noxious and erroneous influence of Homage to Catalonia had an effect on me. It was also one of the first books I read. The parts that are eye-witness reporting are excellent, but it does not offer in any way a reliable analysis of the wider politics of the war. In a later letter, Orwell even admits that in the book he gave a more sympathetic account of the pro-Trotskyist POUM’s [Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista] position — i.e., that [Joseph] Stalin was responsible for the defeat of the Republic — than he actually believed himself. He justified this by saying he felt they had not received a fair hearing in the press.