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SPAIN: The Vital Years by Louis Bolin

SPAIN: The Vital Years

By

Pub Date: Sept. 25th, 1967
Publisher: Lippincott

This book will raise eyebrows and blood temperatures. A study of the Spanish Civil War from the Nationalist side, Spain: The Vital years attempts to tip the scale of public opinion away from the Republicans by raising the issue of International Communism. Its monophobic view of history may be summed up in one exemplative sentence: ""Yesterday, today and tomorrow, for the countries of Europe there exists only one danger--Communism."" Communism is not only the root of all evil, but the central cause of the Spanish Civil War as well. The author, Spanish consultant on tourism to the World Bank in Morocco and to the United Nations in Argentina, sees the War as having ""saved Spain from becoming, like Russia and China, a Communist country and another prison-house for the human soul."" World-wide sympathy for the Republican cause was, obviously, based on an ""illusion."" Because the Spanish Civil War continues to arouse violent partisanship, Spain: The Vital Years will be applauded in some circles, damned in others. But its value as history is negligible. It is an elaborate apologia by a Franco apologist. It lacks only an imprimatur.