Franco Author:Sheelagh Ellwood ISBN 0582014670, paperback — "Profiles in Power" series from Longman Publishing — Over a century after his birth in 1892, almost twenty years after his death in 1975, Francisco Franco remains an intensely controversial figure. His key role in the Civil War, which brought him supreme military and political power in Spain and the deep and enduring s... more »uspicion and hostility of much of the wider world, has tended to overshadow hi subsequent career of four decades as autocratic Head of State in Spain. The sheer longevity of his hold on power is astonishing: he survived the fall of the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini; his repressive measures were successful both in holding Spain down and in holding it together; he achieved a measure of political accommodation with the western democratic powers; and he died in his bed, bequeathing power only at the last moment to his chosen (albeit very different) successor.
The book draws on a wide variety of Spanish and other sources, and on Dr Ellwood's own research and observation carried out over twenty years. It offers critical interpretation as well as a wealth of factual information. Scholars will welcome its lucid analysis, which never loses its way in unwieldly detail; but the book has been written throughout to be accessible to a non-specialist readership, and it assumes little previous knowledge of Spanish History.
Dr Sheelagh Ellwood is research analyst for the Iberian Peninsula in the Research and Analysis Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London.« less