Comrades

Portraits from the Spanish Civil War

A bravura interpretation of the course, causes and characters of the Spanish Civil War, still the twentieth century's bloodiest internal conflict. Analysis of the Civil War has always focused on victors and vanquished, but what of those who eschewed the struggle, those who stood apart from the carnage and chaos? Was there a Third Way?

Starting at the extreme right of the political spectrum and moving across it to the extreme left, using the emblematic lives of ten key individuals, this book builds up an astonishingly vivid picture of how the war came to pass, and how those who started, suffered and stopped it were coloured by the experience.

Here are brilliant psychological profiles of the communist firebrand La Pasionaria, of the canny falangist Primo de Rivera, of the aloof intellectual non-participant Salvador Madariaga, and of the enigma himself, Generalissimo Franco.