Por la república. La sombra del franquismo en la historiografía «progresista»

Abstract

This article questions whether there exists a ‘revisionist’ current that aims not only to undermine the ‘consensus’ on the Second Republic, but also to demonstrate the latter’s ‘illegitimacy’. Such is the position of a small group of historians who, having proclaimed themselves as the guardians of orthodoxy on the period, do not hesitate to stigmatize in ideological terms all those that diverge from their standpoint. This article maintains that the approach of these historians is more political than academic and that it is the result of a retrospective reading of the Republic’s first six years via the prism of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. Their interpretation is also the product of an obsessive desire not to give any credit to the dictatorship’s profoundly negative account of the Republic. In so doing, these historians often distort the facts and ignore the sources and data that, in their judgement, might present «a tremendously negative vision» or «catastrophic» one of the Republic and its «defects».