ABSTRACT
This introduction provides an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the concepts that provide helpful ways to escape the Francoist interpretation of the past and which provide better or new ways of understanding what happened. It focuses on the way actors at the local level deployed violence to secure rational goals such as the securing of political power and influence. The book explores British policy to show how UK politicians refrained from intervening to stop the repression they well understood. It describes about scholars working both in Spain and the United Kingdom who engage with a series of conceptual and historiographical questions which historians have profitably discussed across Europe. The book elucidates the Francoist prison system to provide a view from above and highlights the central role played by the Catholic Church in running jails.
