Tuesday 14 June 2016
El Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria
El paper dels experts estrangers en l’estudi de la història d’Espanya
Speaker: Prof. Paul Preston
Time: 19 h.
Place: Sala Moragues, El Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria, Comercial 5, Barcelona
Born CCM flyer
El Born CCM, one of the newest History museums in Barcelona, hosted on 14 June 2016 an interesting two hour conversation between Professor Montserrat Duch (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona) and Professor Paul Preston.
Professor Duch began by highlighting Professor Preston’s role as one of the leading representatives of Anglo-Saxon historiography of Spain. She then asked Preston about his career and how he moved from a social history approach to a more biographical one. In reply, he offered the audience a biographical portrait of himself that threw light on this journey emphasising the early influence of his childhood in the post-World War II Liverpool, a city that was still deeply affected by the Fascist bombings, a pivotal event that drew him towards studying the war and its origins. After a disappointing intellectual experience at Oxford, the young Preston was inspired by Hugh Thomas’ classes at the University of Reading, where he gained his MA in European Studies. Returning to Oxford to do a doctorate, he spent four years in Madrid from 1969 to 1973 and spent five years discovering Spain and its population, becoming involved with the anti-Francoist opposition upon his return to Britain. For his doctoral research, Paul Preston studied the breakdown of the Spanish Second Republic, which led to the publication of The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform Reaction and Revolution in the Second Spanish Republic, in 1978. This was followed in 1986 by an analysis of the transition to democracy, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain. An increasingly biographical approach led to individual portraits including Franco: A biography (1993), Juan Carlos: A People’s King (2003) and The Last Stalinist: The Life of Santiago Carrillo (2014); and the collective biographies ¡Comrades! (1998), Doves of War (2002) and We Saw Spain Die (2008).
Other issues discussed during the conversation were the responsibility of Great Britain for the defeat of the Republic, the Franco regime's legacy of corruption, anti-Catalanism and the unresolved question of Historical Memory. Finally, Paul Preston was asked questions by the audience especially on current issues. Whilst recognising the complexity underlying the issue of the ‘Brexit’ referendum on 23 June, he stated that Brexit would be a disaster. On the issue of Catalan independence, he stated that Catalans should be able to express their wishes.