El camino al 18 de julio : La erosión de la democracia en España (diciembre de 1935-julio de 1936)

According to José Ortega y Gasset, the essential aspect for understanding the Spanish Civil War is its origins, how it began. Now, ninety years later, this remains the key factor, and this work attempts to address that need. It is not just another book about the war, but rather focuses on the last seven months of the Second Republic, which definitively paved the way for July 18th. The armed conflict would never have occurred without the profound erosion of democracy during that period. The renowned Hispanist Stanley G. Payne addresses such decisive events as the dissolution of Parliament by President Alcalá-Zamora at the end of 1935, the challenge to electoral democracy due to fraud, exclusion, and violence, the tensions within the Popular Front, the tactics of the revolutionary parties, the partisan application of the law, the role of political violence, the military conspiracy, and the final days of the parliamentary Republic.