Book excerpt: A sibling of interwar Europe's other fascist regimes, Franco's Spain survived them all, growing to old age in an era of liberal democracy in Western Europe. It weathered the explosive social movements and student disillusionment of the 1960s and lingered into the 1970s, its earlier fascist ideology attenuated almost out of recognition, with simple survival its greatest preoccupation. Francois Spain looks beyond the mythology surrounding the origins of the dictatorship to provide a critical overview of the regime -- from its emergence after a bloody uprising against a democratic government; through the "high period" of Francoism with its poverty, hunger and fear, followed by a complex period of change and economic growth; to the final demise of the dictatorship, amid open opposition and internal defections. Economic and social conditions are as integral a part of the story in Franco's Spain, as politics and international relations find their place alongside purely domestic issues. The book also peers beyond the grave, examining the transition to democracy after the dictator's death in 1975.