The anarchists' negative conduct, combined with their violence, goes a long way to explain why the civil war occurred.

By far the worst event in Spanish history, it occurred because of a failed coup d'état sponsored by intelligent but ruthless army officers who had been prominent in the recent wars against the Rif in Morocco, and by a small number of falangists or fascists, mostly young men with an ideological resentment against the Left. They were supported by a Catholic church which had seen its ancient privileges pushed aside by intolerant liberal reformers, and by landowners who hated the agrarian changes that those reformers had introduced. Religious processions at Easter had been attacked and church steps had sometimes been soaped in the hope of causing the Virgin Mary to fall as she was carried from the building. The Russian Revolution had taken place less than 20 years before and the language of some socialists suggested that some on the Left rather hoped that catastrophe would be visited on Spain. In addition, Spain seemed about to break up, with an independent Catalonia accompanied by a free Basque country and a self-assertive Galicia.War of class, war of religion, war of secession, the civil war had many elements.

Professor Preston does well to commemorate those who did what they could to restrain the killings, on the two sides. In that spirit, and now that anyone involved in the civil war who is still alive is likely to be at least 90, the time has surely come to establish a memorial to all who died on both sides in the manner of the museum of Yad Vashem outside Jerusalem which commemorates the Holocaust of the Nazis. We should forget about who killed whom, at Paracuellos or in the Triana, and rejoice that personal relations between the classes in Spain are as good as they now are. Of course the Right killed more than the Left, but victors always kill more. The Spanish Yad Vashem should have inscribed in alphabetical order the names of everyone who died violently in the civil war and afterwards. Federico García Lorca, murdered by nationalists near Granada, should be there as well as Pedro Muñoz Seca, the surrealist playwright executed by Republicans at Paracuellos. A great work of art should be commissioned from a noble sculptor to inspire times of happiness not revenge and to recall that the transition to liberty after the death of General Franco in 1975 was a political triumph of the first order.