The go to man on the Spanish Civil War is Stanley Payne.  He has been writing on the conflict since the Fifties.  He interviewed many of the leaders of the various factions in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.  Originally a man of the Left, I think it would be fair now to call him a conservative, but what he is above all is a first class historian.

I would recommend his The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union and Communism, and for background his Spain a Unique History, which is not only an overview of controversies in Spanish History, but also a memoir of his life spent studying Spanish History.  His look at how the present Spanish Socialist government is using the Civil War for political purposes is biting and  incisive.

Everything he has written is worth reading, and I have read most of his work.

Anthony Beevor, although somewhat sympathetic to the Anarchists, did an excellent one volume history a few years ago which is superb about showing the military mistakes of the Republic.

The best memoir of a participant that I have read is Combat Over Spain by the Duke of Lerma.  He served as a nationalist pilot during the war.  Growing up in a bi-lingual family, he wrote his memoir in both English and Spanish.  His descriptions of life in Spain prior to the Civil War and during it give the reader a feel for the conflict lacking in other works.

Spain in Arms:  A Military History of the Spanish Civil War by E. R. Hooton is one of the better military histories of the struggle that I have read, but it is cursed by bad maps.

Burnett Bolloten’s The Spanish Civil War:  Revolution and Counter-Revolution. The late Mr. Bolloten made an in depth study of magazines, newspapers, pamphlets and other publications published in Spain during the war. You find material in his history you find nowhere else. He is especially good on the byzantine Republican factional infighting.

Jose Alvarez has written two volumes on the Spanish Foreign Legion in the Rif War and in the first year of the Spanish Civil War.  Lots of painstaking original research.  Three drawbacks:  the writing is dry, the minute account of skirmishes and battles can blur together and the maps are close to useless.

I have learned more about Spain and the Spanish Civil War from Gironella’s trilogy of novels, however, than I have from all the hundreds of histories I have read on that conflict.  In the first volume in his trilogy,  the lead up to the war is depicted in Cypresses;   the war  is set forth unforgettably in One Million Dead;  and the aftermath of the war is depicted in Peace After War.   Gironella, a veteran of the Nationalist Army, achieves the remarkable feat of creating sympathetic characters in all the warring factions.  Many of these characters do terrible things, but Gironella skillfully leads the reader to understand why they did them without condoning their actions.  Spain is very much a figure in these novels as the characters act out the various aspects of the Spanish character and fight over what Spain was, is and should be.  The whole work is suffused by a deeply Catholic spirit and sensibility as the characters come closer to God or repel themselves away from Him.  The finest novels I have ever read.

In studying the Spanish Civil War I ever keep in mind the foreword that Gironella wrote to his trilogy for his American readers:

“Author’s Note for the American Edition
Spain is an unknown country. Experience proves that it is hard to view my country impartially. Even writers of high order succumb to the temptation to adulterate the truth, to treat our customs and our psychology as though everything about them were of a piece, of a single color. Legends and labels pile up: black Spain, inquisitorial Spain, beautiful Spain, tragic Spain, folkloric Spain, unhappy Spain, a projection of Africa into the map of Europe.
I defend the complexity of Spain. If this book attempts to demonstrate anything it is this: that there are in this land thousands of possible ways of life. Through a Spanish family of the middle class–the Alvears–and the day-by-day living of a provincial capital–Gerona–I have tried to capture the everyday traits, the mentality, the inner ambiance of my compatriots in all their pettiness and all their grandeur. In Spain the reaction to this novel has been that it is “implacable”. Nothing could satisfy me more.
This book spans a period of five years, five years in the private and public life of the nation: those which preceded the last civil war, which speeded its inevitable coming. The explosion of that war, its scope, and its significance are described in minute detail.
A single warning to the American reader: Spain is a peculiar country and its institutions therefore take on unique coloration. Certain constants of the Spanish temperament operate under any circumstance. A Spanish Freemason is not an international Freemason. A Spanish Communist is not even an orthodox Communist. In every instance what is characteristic is a tendency toward the instinctive, toward the individualistic, and toward the anarchic. Spaniards follow men better than they follow ideas, which are judged not by their content, but by the men who embody them. This accounts for the inclemency of personal relationships, the small respect for laws; this, too, is what causes our periodic civil wars.
To bear all this in mind is important in understanding this book. When the narrative deals with a priest, a policeman, a Socialist, a bootblack, it is essential to remember that it is dealing with a Spanish priest, a Spanish policeman, a Spanish Socialist, a Spanish bootblack, not with generic types. This warning is doubly necessary with reference to Freemasonry, Communism, and Catholicism, the interpretation of which will undoubtedly clash with the American reader’s concept of these doctrines.
The book’s protagonist–Ignacio Alvear–is a type of young man who abounds in present-day Spain.
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
August 1954
José Maria Gironella”