Peter Anderson and Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco ,*Franco's Famine: Malnutrition, Disease and Starvation in Post-Civil War Spain*. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.

Send us Fan MailIn the 1940s, Spain experienced a devastating famine that claimed the lives of at least 200,000 people due to hunger and malnutrition-related illnesses. This book provides a political framework for understanding the famine, bringing together a diverse group of academics from Spain, the UK, the US, and Australia. It discusses various aspects, including the political roots of the famine, its physical and social effects, the survival methods adopted by Spaniards, the regime's unwillingness to accept international aid, the politics of cooking amid scarcity, and the legacy of the famine.This volume challenges the ongoing silence and misrepresentation surrounding the famine. It reveals the harsh truth of how lives were lost in Spain because the Francoist authorities enforced a policy of food self-sufficiency (or autarky), which included price controls and restrictions on food transport and sales. The contributors outline the significant decline in food production that followed, the widespread hoarding that occurred, and the emergence of a vast and deeply unjust black market during a time when wages fell to 50% below their 1936 levels—factors that are explored in detail for the first time in this work.