Abstract
Stanley Payne, Spain: A Unique History, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008; xi + 304 pp.; £23.50 pbk; ISBN 9780299250249
There are very few hispanists with the prestige and influence of Stanley Payne. In his very long and fruitful career, he has produced a vast number of outstanding monographs dealing with crucial subjects such as the origins of the Spanish Civil War, Spanish fascism and the Spanish armed forces. Rather than a traditional survey, this book under review, to a large extent, represents the conclusion of Payne’s scholarly effort. His effort to challenge the many deeply rooted myths and subtle distortions of the truth which have contributed to existing stereotypes about Spain is laudable, stereotypes which many regimes – including that of General Francisco Franco – sought to consolidate for economic/touristic reasons: ‘Spain is different’.
The first section of the book, entitled the ‘Formation of a Hispanist’, stresses the particular character of Hispanism: recognized as an ‘ism’ in itself unlike the scholarly study of other western nations. Payne then devotes the rest of this short section to explain the fortuitous circumstances which led him, a young student in the United States, first to choose being a hispanist and then to produce from 1961 (when his doctoral thesis on the Falange was published) until today a number of pioneering and thought-provoking works.
The second part, and in my opinion the best, entitled ‘a Reading of the History of Spain’, covers a vast period: from early medieval history to the fall of the Liberal Monarchy in 1931. This is a succinct, precise and enlightening analysis of some of the key historical myths and debates. It includes vital topics such as the relations between the two Iberian nations (Spain and Portugal), the so-called decadence or long-lasting decline that the Spanish empire underwent from the seventeenth century and the shortcomings of nineteenth-century Spanish Liberalism. In particular, I would like to single out Payne’s dissection of one of the most enduring myths in the making of Modern Spain, that of the Reconquista, the nearly 800-year epic struggle between Christians and Muslims, an epic which indeed, as Payne clearly points out, is based on hollow foundations: the least Romanized area of the peninsula (Asturias) was, according to the grand narrative, the cradle of such a deed. In other words, those who ‘reconquered’ Spain were those who had not really been conquered.
The third and final part, entitled ‘Dilemmas of Contemporary History’, contains chapters in which the author’s mastery of certain topics is confirmed. In particular, Payne’s examination of the constant meddling of the armed forces in politics and of the ‘strange’ case of Spanish fascism (the Falange) are to a large extent conclusions from previous monographs. However, this section is controversial for two reasons. First, the choice of topics is slightly baffling. One has to consider the length of the text and the editorial demands. Still, the two currently most debated questions by both Spanish and Anglo-Saxon scholars are missing: historical memory and repression. It is far from convincing that a chapter entitled ‘Francisco Franco: Fascist Monster or Savior of the Fatherland?’ only spends two short paragraphs dealing with the brutal repression carried out by the Nationalists under his leadership during and after the Civil War. We are referring to someone who has the record of having signed more death sentences than any other leader in the long and often violent history of Spain, a dictator whose regime was based first on the values of sheer terror to paralyse any resistance to his rule learnt in the colonial campaigns in North Africa and then on the instutionalization of the climate of the Civil War (the so-called crusade) until his death. Also puzzling is the statement that prior to the Civil War Franco observed legality more thoroughly than Manuel Azaña (two times Prime Minister and from April 1936 President of the Republic). To make matters worse, Payne cites as his source of corroboration Pío Moa, the leader of the ill-named Revisionist School, a non-academic and blatantly neo-Francoist group of writers.
In conclusion, this is a reader-friendly and original work. Despite my disagreement with some of the topics chosen in its last part or the controversial nuance given to the examination of General Franco, this is a welcome and important contribution to scholarly debate. It will be greatly appreciated by undergraduate students and teachers of Spanish history alike. Ultimately I cannot agree more with Payne’s concluding paragraph: ‘the Spanish problem is to provide national coherence for whatever path is followed, and to recognize the ambiguity and complexity of its history. The two major historical controversies – that over the nation, and the second about the Civil War and Francoism, which are not unrelated – have no immediate resolution, since the divides are not merely historiographical but even more political, and will persist for some time’ (258).
University of Bristol