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Hello, the Spanish Civil War was a defining war of the 20th century

It was a brutal conflict that polarized Spain pitting the left against the right the anti-claricals against the church

The unions against the landed classes and the republicans against the monarchists

It was a bloody war which saw in the space of just three years the murder and execution of

350,000 people it was also a conflict which soon became internationalized

Becoming a battleground for the forces of fascism and communism as Europe itself geared up for war

But what were the roots of the Spanish Civil War to what extent did Franco prosecute the war as a religious crusade?

How did Franco institutionalizes victory after the war and has spain fully come to terms with its past with me?

A Paul Preston professor of contemporary Spanish history at the London School of Economics and author of the Doves of War and the Spanish Civil War

Helen Graham professor of Spanish history at the Royal Holloway University of London and author of Spanish Republic of War and Mary Vincent

Senior lecture in the Department of History at Chefil University of Paul Preston

Let's explore the roots of the Spanish Civil War which started in

1936 but let's take it back earlier than that. Where do you think is the deepest starting point for what happened in Spain in the 30s?

Well if we had old day I would say you know probably start in the 14th century but to be serious

I think we've got to start looking in the last third of the 19th century when you've got a

Spain which is predominantly an agrarian country and I'm speaking very crudely here the north of the country

mainly poor smallholders deeply Catholic smallholders the south of the country huge estates worked by a sort of wretched population of landless labourers

and then dotted around the country certain sort of very few centres of advanced industry Barcelona

Madrid, Bilbao and the minds of Asturias so it's a country of tremendously uneven development

enormous social conflict and certain problems like I mean that there's the long loss of empire throughout the 19th century culminating in 1898 with the final loss of empire

...