ABSTRACT
Having aroused such passions in its day, the Spanish Civil War has inevitably inspired disagreement among historians. For many years the Franco regime saw to it that within Spain itself only pro-Nationalist accounts of the 1930s could be published, leaving the field of serious scholarship to foreigners, mostly from Britain and the United States. Even they found access to many important historical sources difficult or impossible. With the coming of a new democracy to Spain, however, the situation has been transformed; enormous quantities of previously inaccessible research materials have become available to historians, and now, quite properly, it is the Spaniards themselves who are at the forefront of research, publication and the challenging of old orthodoxies. Debate concerning the Spanish Civil War and its origins therefore remains vigorous. The sections that follow represent an attempt to examine briefly some of the liveliest areas of debate.
