Modernizing the Nation

This book is a new short history of Spain during a crucial period, the reign of Alfonso XIII (1902-1931). Traditionally, this has been seen as a time that epitomised the worst features of 'old Spain': a backward country, poor and chronically unequal, with a government dominated by a tiny oligarchy ruling over a corrupt system -- an anomaly in Western Europe. However, this study, in line with the most recent historiography, offers a new insight into the period as one that was actually characteris