Book description
A powerful biography of Spain's great king, Juan Carlos, by the
pre-eminent writer on 20th-century Spanish history.
There are two central mysteries in the life of Juan Carlos, one
personal, the other political. The first is the apparent serenity with
which he accepted that his father had surrendered him, to all intents
and purposes, into the safekeeping of the Franco regime. In any normal
family, this would have been considered a kind of cruelty or, at the
very least, baleful negligence. But a royal family can never be normal,
and the decision to send the young Juan Carlos away from Spain was
governed by a certain 'superior' dynastic logic.
The second mystery lies in how a prince raised in a family with the
strictest authoritarian traditions, who was obliged to conform to the
Francoist norms during his youth and educated to be a cornerstone of the
plans for the reinforcement of the dictatorship, eventually sided so
emphatically and courageously with democratic principles.
Paul Preston - perhaps the greatest living commentator on modern Spain
- has set out to address these mysteries, and in so doing has written
the definitive biography of King Juan Carlos. He tackles the king's
turbulent relationship with his father, his cloistered education, his
bravery in defending Spain's infant democracy after Franco's death and
his immense hard work in consolidating parliamentary democracy in Spain.
The resulting biography is both rigorous and riveting, its vibrant prose
doing justice to its vibrant subject. It is a book fit for a king. 'An
excellent biography…It reads like a spy thriller…There is no doubt that
Preston is an ardent fan of Juan Carlos, and his compelling style
carries the reader with him…Preston's great skill is to recreate real
suspense over the thirty-five years that elapsed between Juan Carlo's
arrival in Spain as a boy and the irreversible entrenchment of democracy
in the 1980s.' Sunday Times
'This is that rare thing - a work of academic history that is also an
absorbing narrative. And its great merit is to remind us that at the
centre of all the dynastic wrangling, political conspiracy and media
speculation stands a man who has often felt very alone.' Economist
'As with most of Preston's work, his eye for the winning detail makes
his subjects quite human and enlivens the world of political maneuvering
into something other than dry history.' Washington Post Paul Preston
CBE FBA is Principe de Asturias Professor of Spanish History and
Director of the Canada Blanch Centre at the LSE. Born and raised in
Liverpool, educated at Oxford, he has taught in Reading, Rome and
London. He lives in north London with his wife and their two sons. And
he supports Everton FC.
