Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
Juan Carlos : Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy, Paperback / softback Book

Juan Carlos : Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy Paperback / softback

Paperback / softback

Out of Stock - We are unable to provide an estimated availability date for this product

Description

A powerful biography of Spain’s great king, Juan Carlos, by the pre-eminent writer on 20th-century Spanish history. There are two central mysteries in the life of Juan Carlos, one personal, the other political.The first is the apparent serenity with which he accepted that his father had surrendered him, to all intents and purposes, into the safekeeping of the Franco regime.

In any normal family, this would have been considered a kind of cruelty or, at the very least, baleful negligence.

But a royal family can never be normal, and the decision to send the young Juan Carlos away from Spain was governed by a certain ‘superior’ dynastic logic. The second mystery lies in how a prince raised in a family with the strictest authoritarian traditions, who was obliged to conform to the Francoist norms during his youth and educated to be a cornerstone of the plans for the reinforcement of the dictatorship, eventually sided so emphatically and courageously with democratic principles. Paul Preston – perhaps the greatest living commentator on modern Spain – has set out to address these mysteries, and in so doing has written the definitive biography of King Juan Carlos.

He tackles the king’s turbulent relationship with his father, his cloistered education, his bravery in defending Spain’s infant democracy after Franco’s death and his immense hard work in consolidating parliamentary democracy in Spain.

The resulting biography is both rigorous and riveting, its vibrant prose doing justice to its vibrant subject.

It is a book fit for a king.

Information

Other Formats

Save 15%

£16.99

£14.39

Out of Stock - We are unable to provide an estimated availability date for this product
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information