The Cultural Centre La Nau of the Universitat de València will host the following Tuesday, 19th September, the presentation of the book ‘La Segunda República (1931-1936). Las claves para la primera democracia española del siglo XX’ (The Second Spanish Republic. The keys for the first Spanish democracy of the 20th century). It is written by the professor Ángel Luis López Villaverde and published by Sílex. The event will take place at 19:30 at the Aula Magna. The author and the professors Antonio Laguna and Ricard Camil Torres, from the Univeridad de Castilla-La Mancha and the Universitat de València respectively, will speak.
The prologue is written by the doctor Ángel Viñas, who is a recognised expert in this period of history. The book includes the main contributions of the different historiographic lines about issues related to an open debate. The author is critical of the revisionist approaches on the Second Spanish Republic since they usually oppose its ‘failure’ to the ‘success’ of the Spanish Transition to Democracy. In his opinion, ‘that extremist view’ starts from the Republican collapse, from the later traumatic experience, and it spoils an end that alters its analysis and links its memory to defeat. In this way, it faces the peace Republic period to the distorting mirror of the war Republic period.
The book has two parts of four chapters. The first part involves the main questions -what, how, who and why?- and is about the political and cultural history. The second one focus in the thematic keys (the power organization, the hopes and worries that it provoked and the betrayal of the Republic). This part involves the social, political and cultural history. Therefore, both the individual protagonists and the collective actors have their place here.
Ángel Viñas underlines in the prologue ‘the effort of the academic historian Ángel Luis López Villaverde to make available to a cultured but not specialized reader, the results of the most modern research and specialized literature, both of Spanish origin as foreigner’. A book ‘for a reader who wants to have a quick, relatively brief but at the same time complete analysis of the evolution of the Second Spanish Republic to the deep bankruptcy that was the military uprising’. He adds that ‘it is probably one of the best ones that are available on the market today’.
Ángel Luis López Villaverde is Tenured University Professor of the Department of History of the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. He has taught at the Faculty of Education Sciences and Arts. Nowadays he works at the Faculty of Journalism of the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, in which he is the Dean. He did his PhD about ‘Cuenca during the 2nd Republic’ and one of his main research lines is the political-religious conflict in the Spanish Republic period.
Last update: 15 de september de 2017 08:56.
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