A European success story

PETER ANDERSON is impressed by a sweeping history of modern Spain, covering a century in which the country experienced both wartime tragedy and economic triumph

- PETER ANDERSON

In 2019, 83.7 million tourists travelled to Spain where they spent €92.28bn (approx £81bn). This is one reason why the Spanish economy has grown to become the fourth largest in the European Union. Yet Spaniards have not always enjoyed the self-confidence of today. At the tail end of the 19th century, they suffered a crushing and humiliating defeat at the hands of the United States in Cuba, leaving the Spanish newspaper El Correo to bemoan “everything is broken in this unhappy country”. For figures like General Franco, the ‘Disaster’ helped fuel an obsession with making Spain great again. For more progressive groups on the centre and left, the great task lay in becoming more like, and better integrated with, other European countries. Meanwhile, for historians of Europe, Spain always seemed like small beer compared to countries such as Germany and France, and its broad 20th-century history remained too often in the shadows.