Franco’s Famine – new book from Dr Peter Anderson

Franco’s Famine: Malnutrition, Disease and Starvation in Post-Civil War Spain challenges the silence and misrepresentation that still surrounds the famine in Spain during the 1940s.

The book provides a political explanation for the famine, in which at least 200,000 people died from hunger or malnutrition-related diseases, and brings together a broad range of academics based in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia to achieve this. Topics such as the political causes of the famine, the physical and social consequences, the ways Spaniards attempted to survive, and the regime’s reluctance to accept international relief are all explored.

It reveals the reality of how people perished in Spain because the Francoist authorities instituted a policy of food self-sufficiency (or autarky): a system of price regulation which placed restrictions on transport as well as food sales.

Edited by Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco and Peter Anderson, the book is available in hardback and ebook format from Bloomsbury Publishing.

Dr Peter Anderson will also be launching his new book, entitled The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain: Taking, Losing, and Fighting for Children, 1926–1945, on Thursday 9 December at 6pm. Book your ticket via Eventbrite.