The historiography on the political violence in the Spain of the thirties

balance and perspectives

Abstract

The political violence was incorporated to the Spanish historiographic debate in the beginning of the eighties. Although then some critics denounced the lack of a clear and rigorous conceptualization for the historical analysis of political violence and a better connection with the perspectives of study proposed by other social sciences, Spain is actually one of the European countries where the violence is studied intensively from new theoretical expositions and innovative methodologies. This article tries to explain this evolution, from the use of political violence as a source of legitimacy in the francoist regime until the scientific debates raised in the last thirty years about the violent manifestations produced during the Second Republic and the Civil War.