Preston, Paul Un Pueblo Traicionado / A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain (8418006749)

Un pueblo traicionado es una historia contempor nea de Espa a escrita por un historiador brit nico que ama este pa s y que lleva cincuenta a os estudiando su pasado.

Nuestra rica y tr gica historia permite muchas aproximaciones; este libro no cae en interpretaciones paternalistas o excepcionalistas, pero sigue las deficiencias de la clase pol tica espa ola entre la restauraci n borb nica de 1874 en la figura de Alfonso XII y el comienzo del reinado de su tataranieto Felipe VI en 2014.

El resultado es un recorrido completo y equilibrado que subraya inevitablemente c mo el progreso del pa s ha sido obstaculizado por la corrupci n y la incompetencia pol tica, y c mo esos dos factores han provocado en repetidas ocasiones el colapso de la cohesi n social y la represi n violenta por parte de las autoridades. Una historia que entrelaza los temas de la influencia del Ej rcito y de la Iglesia, el rechazo popular a las clases dirigentes, el amargo conflicto social, el atraso econ mico y las tensiones territoriales, y que los sit a en su contexto internacional.

As pasamos de la desesperaci n de la crisis de 1898 a momentos de optimismo y progreso en que la realidad social lograba actuar sobre el poder pol tico, hasta llegar a la situaci n actual, de un pesimismo similar al de finales del siglo XIX.

Los pueblos que no conocen su historia est n condenados a repetirla, por eso este libro es de lectura obligatoria.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Nowhere does the ceaseless struggle to maintain democracy in the face of political corruption come more alive than in Paul Preston's magisterial history of modern Spain.

The culmination of a half-century of historical investigation, A People Betrayed is not only a definitive history of modern Spain but also a compelling narrative that becomes a lens for understanding the challenges that virtually all democracies have faced in the modern world.

Whereas so many twentieth-century Spanish histories begin with Franco and the devastating Civil War, Paul Preston's magisterial work begins in the late nineteenth century with Spain's collapse as a global power, especially reflected in its humiliating defeat in 1898 at the hands of the United States and its loss of colonial territory.

This loss hung over Spain in the early years of the twentieth century, its agrarian economic base standing in stark contrast to the emergence of England, Germany, and France as industrial powers. Looking back to the years prior to 1923, Preston demonstrates how electoral corruption infiltrated almost every sector of Spanish life, thus excluding the masses from organized politics and giving them a bitter choice between apathetic acceptance of a decrepit government or violent revolution. So ineffective was the Republic―which had been launched in 1873―that it paved the way for a milit