Spain

Payne has been a leading historian of twentieth-century Spain for the past 50 years. In this compact survey, he covers its history from the Islamic invasion of 711 to the post-Franco era, with an emphasis on weighing the persuasiveness of schools of interpretation about eras and events. For example, popular books such as Maria Rosa Menocal’s The Ornament of the World (2002) hold forth the Muslim period as a tolerant multicultural idyll, which to Payne smacks of political correctness that ignores the Muslim practices of enslavement and recurrent warfare against Christian enclaves of northern Iberia. The historical debate concerning the ensuing Reconquista, completed by 1492, also induces Payne’s ruminations about how the experience of ejecting a Muslim rule so long imposed has uniquely shaped Spanish history. Among the consequences Payne touches on are Spain’s sense of separateness from the rest of Europe, its depth of Catholic faith, and its lagging process of modernity, all national characteristics persisting through the Franco dictatorship that have evaporated in the transition to democracy.