I learned to much from this book - I feel like it gave me a great foundation for understanding modern Spain. The thesis is that (elite corruption + elite corruption) --> social division, as per the subtitle. The Spanish people are given quite a blanket pass in this account. Sociological francoism is sort of brushed off, and the people don't really have all that much agency.

The last few chapters were really just page after page after page of corruption scandals in the post-Franco era. I get it. And I certainly see the continuities. But it just felt like he wanted to write all of these stories and so they all went in and were left in. Over the 150 years or so of the book, things sometimes get way too "inside baseball" as we say in the US - too detailed, sometimes really down in the weeds.

The writing style is interesting. On the one hand, it can be pretty exhilerating. He mostly writes well. On the other hand, sometimes the style of pivoting through different topics creates non sequiturs. As a writer studying this in part for Preston's style I could see the writerly artifice behind it. It's mostly great but, again, it can be overdone.