Professor Paul Preston, CBE, FBA

Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies

As Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre, my principal activities, apart from teaching and research, have been concerned with the expansion of our publishing programme, with widening our relations with regional governments in Spain, particularly Galicia, Catalonia and Valencia, as part of on-going fund-raising efforts and with a substantial programme of public lectures. Regarding my fund-raising efforts, these has involved efforts to secure a number of post-graduate scholarships from the Banco Santander; funding from the Institut Ramon Llull for the lectureship currently held by Dr Joan Costa-Font and a major effort to secure substantial private funding for a new section of the Centre to provide economic forecasting.  I published two books, one in Spain and one in the UK which involved me in numerous promotional activities. In the case of El gran manipulador. La mentira diaria de Franco, I gave more than 60 TV, radio and newspaper interviews. My book We Saw Spain Die. Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War also required considerable promotional activities.

My own research continues work, when other commitments allow, with my research on the repression during and after the Spanish Civil War.

The publishing programme of the Cañada Blanch Centre has been expanded considerably.  The collaboration with Routledge has been renewed alongside new collaborations with Macmillan-Palgrave and Sussex Academic Press.  With Routledge, we have published Hilari Raguer, Gunpowder and Incense: The Catholic Church and the Spanish Civil War; Nicholas Coni, Medicine And Warfare. Spain, 1936-1939; Diego Muro, Ethnicity and Violence: The Case of Radical Basque Nationalism.  There are two further titles, on the period 1918-1923 and on contemporary Spanish politics, currently in production.  With Sussex Academic Press, we have published Soledad Fox, Constancia de la Mora in War and Exile. International Voice for the Spanish Republic and Isabelle Rohr, The Spanish Right and the Jews, 1898-1945: Antisemitism and Opportunism (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2007).  There are two further titles, on Gibraltar and Arturo Barea, currently in production.  With Palgrave-Macmillan, we have published Gerald Blaney, Jr. (ed., Policing Interwar Europe: Continuity, Change and Crisis, 1918-40 and Alejandro Quiroga, Making Spaniards.  Primo de Rivera and the Nationalization of the Masses, 1923-1930.  There is a further title, on Franco and Hitler in the Second World War in production.  We also sponsored the publication of David Baird, Between Two Fires. Guerrilla War in the Spanish Sierras (Málaga: Maroma Press, 2008).  A major new collaboration with the Institut Alfons el Magnànim has been arranged and the first titles will appear in early 2009.

My work has been recognised in various ways.  In 2006, at a ceremony presided over by the King of Spain, I was inaugurated into the Academia Europea de Yuste, where I was given the Marcel Proust Chair.  (The Academy has thirty members, including Umberto Eco, José Saramago, Reinhard Selten, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Alain Touraine).  In 2006, I was awarded the Premi Trias Fargas for my book on war correspondents in the Spanish Civil War.  In 2007, I was made Caballero Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica in recognition of my work on Spanish history.  In the summer of 2008, I was appointed a corresponding member of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (the Catalan Social Science and Humanities Academy).  As Marcel Proust Professor of the European Academy of Yuste, I was part of the jury that elected Simone Weil as the winner of the 2008 Charles V Prize. In Spain, I gave lectures in Granada, Cádiz, Barcelona, Talavera de la Reina, Albacete, Santiago de Compostela, El Ferrol, A Coruña, Mora del Ebro, Logroño, Segovia and Valencia. In Britain, I gave lectures to the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Council at Canning House, the British Academy, the Universities of Cambridge and Sussex and in the BBC Free-Thinking Series as part of the Celebrations of Liverpool as 2008 European City of Culture. At the University of Valencia, I held the 2009 Chair in Social Thought.

LSE Experts entry: Professor Paul Preston

Department of International History profile: Professor Paul Preston

Recent Publications

I.  Books

El gran manipulador. La mentira cotidiana de Franco (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2008) 370 pp.   [Also translated into Catalan]

We Saw Spain Die. Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War (London: Constable, 2008) 436 pp. [Also translated into Spanish and Catalan]

The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, Revolution and Revenge (London: HarperCollins, 2006; New York: W.W.Norton, 2007) 381 pp. [Also translated into Spanish, Catalan, Dutch and Italian]

Botxins i repressors. Els crims de Franco i dels franquistes (Barcelona: Editorial Base, 2006)

Tres años que desafían el olvido: La Guerra Civil. Las fotos que hicieron historia (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros/JdeJ Editores, 2005) 

Juan Carlos. A People’s King (London: HarperCollins, 2004; Published in the USA as Juan Carlos. Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy, New York: W.W.Norton, 2004; UK paperback version published under same title by HarperCollins, 2005) 614 pp. [Also translated into Spanish, Dutch and Portugese]

Francisco Franco (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2003). Co-authored with Ángel Palomino. [Also translated into French]

Doves of War. Four Women of Spain (London: HarperCollins, 2002) 469 pp. [Also translated into Spanish, Italian and Portuguese]

Editor (with Sebastian Balfour), Spain and the Great Powers (London: Routledge, 1999)  [Also translated into Spanish]

¡Comrades! Portraits from the Spanish Civil War (London: HarperCollins, 1999)  [Also translated into Spanish and Italian]

Editor (with Ismael Saz), Dynamism and Conflict. Valencia 1808-1975 (Glasgow: University of Glasgow/Carfax Publishing, 1998)  [Also translated into Spanish]

Editor (with Ann Mackenzie), The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain 1936-1939 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996). [Also translated into Spanish]

Franco: A Biography (London: Harper-Collins, 1993; Corrected edition: New York: Basic Books, 1994) [Also translated into Spanish, Italian and Czechoslovak]

Editor (with Frances Lannon), Elites and Power in Twentieth-Century Spain: Essays in Honour of Sir Raymond Carr (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)

The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military in 20th Century Spain (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990; Corrected edition published in paperback: London: Routledge, 1995) [Also translated into Spanish]

Editor (with Helen Graham), The Popular Front in Europe (London: Macmillan, 1987)

The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; New York: Grove Press, 1986; 2nd English edition fully revised and expanded, with amended title, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War, London: Fontana Press, 1996). [Also translated into Spanish, Italian and Portuguese]

The Triumph of Democracy in Spain, (London and New York: Methuen, 1986) [Also translated into Spanish and German]

Las derechas españolas en el siglo veinte: autoritarismo, fascismo, golpismo (Madrid: Editorial Sistema, 1986).

Editor, Revolution and War in Spain 1931-1939 (London: Methuen, 1984).  [Also translated into Spanish]

Spain, the EEC and NATO (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs & Routledge Kegan and Paul, 1984).  Co-authored with Denis Smyth [Also translated into Spanish]

The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform Reaction and Revolution in the Second Spanish Republic 1931-1936 (London: Macmillan, 1978; 2nd English edition further revised and expanded: London: Routledge, 1994).  [Also translated into Spanish]

Editor, Leviatán: antología (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1976).

Editor, Spain in Crisis: Evolution and Decline of the Franco Regime (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976).  [Also translated into Spanish and Italian]

II.  Articles

'No Simple Purveyor of News: George Steer and Guernica', History Today, Vol. 557, No. 5 (May 2007), pp.12-19

'Censorship and Commitment: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War', International Journal of Iberian Studies, Vol.20, No.3 (2007), pp.5-24.

III.  Prologues & Prefaces

Isabelle Rohr, The Spanish Right and the Jews, 1898-1945. Antisemitism and Opportunism (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2007)

John Langdon-Davies, Behind the Spanish Barricades. Reports from the Spanish Civil War (London: Reportage Press, 2007)

Soledad Fox Maura, Constancia de la Mora. Esplendor y sombra de una vida española del siglo XX (Sevilla: Espuela de Plata, 2008)

Herbert R. Southworth, El mito de la cruzada de Franco (Barcelona: RandomHouseMondadori, 2008)

^