ABSTRACT
Only very rarely in modern history had Spain been brought into contact with her European neighbours. The last occasion had been in the Napoleonic wars, when some of the major battles of the British campaign against France were fought on Spanish earth. After 1815, Spain withdrew once more behind her natural and cultural frontiers, the object of European investment and marginal political involvement by the great powers, only to be dragged bloodily into Europe again by the Military Rising. Then, quite suddenly, Europe rediscovered Spain and European political rivalries were again fought out on Spanish territory. When the Civil War was over, Spain withdrew from Europe for a further decade, trying to recover from the desolation the struggle had created. The Spanish war, at the cost of great suffering for the Spanish people, allowed Europe to see a preview of the new tactics and equipment that would be the hallmarks of a major European war. Without German aeroplanes – first transport, and then fighters and bombers – or even without Soviet fighters and tanks, the war would have been very different and far less devastating. The use of bombers against undefended towns; the continuous shelling of civilian populations, the deployment of troops with air cover – these and many other aspects of the Spanish Civil War provided valuable military lessons for the major European powers, but not for Spain herself. All that she gained from the inflow of foreign troops and equipment was physical devastation and the stunting of her economic growth.
