75 years ago: a coup attempt that led to civil war

On July 16 - 18, 1936, a group of officers attempted a coup against the republican government that initially failed and led to the Spanish Civil War.

"Today in History" of the Washington Post: "In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began as right-wing army generals launched a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic."

The Wikipedia has an exhaustive article on that conflict that also introduces one to the relevant literature.

Today's Spanish and Catalan newspapers are full of special articles on the topic, some of them accessible for free.

Fully accessible:

El País dedicates one of its Sunday supplements ("Domingo" - generally full of political comment, essays, excerpts of political books, etc.) to the anniversary, here.

And in its Sunday magazine "El País Semanal" an interview with Paul Preston.

El Periòdico offers a day-to-day overview of the war's beginnings.

La Vanguardia has video documentaries, here.

Only headlines or summary:

The Catalan daily Ara only tells us what's in their printed edition, here.

Avui's Sunday supplement Presència lets us see the pictures (pdf dossier here), but not the interview with historian Paul Preston.


Spanish public television broadcasted a documentary on the still open questions about that conflict, they have it on-line here.

It stresses the essential importance of the aid from fascist Germany and Italy to the rebels from the very beginning: e.g. without their planes, Franco's troops from Northern Africa could not have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar as quickly and easily as they did...

One of the leading experts is Paul Preston. The LSE's Who's Who here. He leads the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies. El País offers these articles on the historian and/or his work.

MSNBC has a blog entry on the pictures of that war.