Ganar la guerra, perder la paz

The testimony of General Rafael Latorre (1880-1968) allows us to gain access for the first time to the interiors of Franco's regime, evidencing how, under its false monolithic appearance, the regime included conflicting opinions within it. This is not just another book on busy contemporary Spanish history: they are the first memoirs of a high-ranking military man, with relevant destiny and contacts, but contrary to most of the principles and actions of the dictatorship. In his notebooks, complaints about gratuitous violence and abuses of power, especially by the Falange, are piled up, evidence of generalized corruption is accumulated even in the environment of the dictator and the leadership of the Army, and multiple examples of the military, technical and political incompetence of the new authorities. His pen sheds a new light on the civil war in settings ranging from Navarra to Asturias and from Teruel to Morocco, but also on characters and decisive events in our history, from Generals Franco, Asensio or D'Harcourt, to contacts with international agents on the part of the Franco regime. For General Latorre, this accumulation of dissent and defects, of corruption and arbitrariness, caused those who had won the war to lose the peace.