The Spanish Civil War aroused passionate feelings that remain unresolved half a century later. In the bitter conflict between the Republican government and Franco's military rebels, Spain became an ideological battleground for international socialism and fascism. Nearly three-quarters of a million people died and many more were injured or left homeless as a result of the military campaigns, atrocities and feudings. But the war, particularly to the young, seemed crucial to the future not just of Spain but of the whole of Europe. It inspired intellectuals and artists of all kinds and brought volunteers from many countries to join the fight, most but by no means all of them on the side of the Republicans.

This book is a visual record of the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of fighting in 1936, and comprises a wide variety of dramatic pictorial material, both black-and-white and colour, some of which has rarely or never been reproduced before. It follows, with the help of chronologies, the main course of events in Spain from 1936 to the crushing disillusionment of the Republican defeat in 1939, focussing in on particular aspects of the war. The international nature of the conflict, discussed by Raymond Carr in his introduction, is especially featured, and the book includes unfamiliar material from the archives of the International Brigades among photographs, posters, propaganda material and ephemera of all kinds from sources inside and outside Spain. Together, the images portray the military, political and social history of the war, but they also evoke a sense of the idealistic zeal and extraordinary creative energy of the period.