According to Pinkoski, Payne finds the origin of the civil war “in the eruption of revolutionary politics.” More: Stanley Payne is probably the foremost living historian of that event writing in the English language. People who are worried that the US could descend into civil war ought to be studying the Spanish conflict. It shows how democratic regimes can die from self-inflicted wounds. But the true story of Spain’s troubled republic is much more interesting and instructive. How did this happen? Too often, Americans are taught a simpleminded morality tale about this period: the fascists destroyed democracy. In just a few years, the constitution was in ruins and Spain was at war with itself. In 1931, Spain established a liberal, republican, democratic constitution on a wide basis of popular and elite support.
The Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939) suffered one of the most accelerated cases of democratic decline in European history.
The scholar Nathan Pinkoski, writing in The Claremont Review of Books, considers the take on the Spanish Civil War by the venerable historian of Spain, Stanley Payne.
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