In Spanish Trenches: A superb overview of Ireland’s role in a vicious conflict
Historians
HISTORY
In Spanish Trenches: The Minds and Deeds of the Irish Who Fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War
By Barry McLoughlin and Emmet O’Connor
University College Dublin Press, €30
Few wars of such complexity have been perceived so simplistically as the Spanish Civil War. Initially the Irish public, swayed by exaggerated accounts of anti-clerical atrocities, saw it as a battle “between Christ and anti-Christ”. They backed Eoin O’Duffy’s farcical crusade to lead ...