….THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, AND THE CRISIS OF ACADEMIC LEGITIMACY
"Almost from the moment of its outbreak in July 1936, the Spanish Civil War sparked intense public controversy in many different countries, not least in the United States. For some, the embattled Republican government represented the last bastion of democracy against fascism on the march. For others, the military rebels led by Franco were Christian crusaders fighting godless Communism. Throughout the three years that the war raged on, intellectuals, politicians, religious leaders, and activists in Europe and the Americas violently disputed each other's versions of the "truth about Spain."
Seventy years later, surprisingly little has changed. The disagreements over what really happened between 1936 and 1939 seem just as intense, and just as intractable, as during the war itself. In March 2007, the opening in New York of an exhibit showing how the Civil War was experienced and perceived by the city and its inhabitants—about a thousand of whom joined the Republican army as international volunteers—gave rise to some testy exchanges among scholars, journalists, and veterans' relatives. Recent work by American, British, and Spanish historians of the Civil War has come in for sharp criticism and praise from academic colleagues. And in Spain itself, the anniversary year of 2006 has helped revive or intensify decades-long disagreements that show no signs of abating. The Spanish disputes are particularly significant because conflicting interpretations of the war are directly linked to the much wider debate about the legacy of Francoism—a debate that was skirted in the country's transition to democracy in the late 1970s, but that has now come back to haunt it with a vengeance…"
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