Introduction

The student of the Spanish Civil War and its immediate origins has, until very recently, been at an enormous disadvantage by comparison with colleagues concerned with the comparable experiences of Italy, Germany or Austria. The defeat of the Axis dictatorships permitted a wholesale opening of archives which was the basis not only for research into the fascist period but also for investigation of the social and political conflicts which preceded it. One of the side effects of the fact that General Franco failed ultimately to join his erstwhile Axis backers in declaring war on the Western allies was that archives remained closed. In any case, much documentation was destroyed during the Civil War either by accident or by those who feared reprisals. Thereafter, thirty-six years of dictatorship provided ample opportunity for the elimination of material likely to shed light on the repression and corruption which characterized the regime, especially in its early years. Only with the death of the dictator did the lamentable situation of Spanish archives begin to improve. Even then, it remained common for certain privileged individuals to gain exclusive access to closed archives and then use them for their own benefit while simultaneously criticizing others for their failure to use the same sources. However, thanks to the efforts of a number of Spanish scholars, perhaps most notably Professor Angel Viñas, there was gradual progress which, with the coming to power of the Socialist Party in 1982, has become quite dramatic. ¹