CONFERENCE BY MIGUEL ÁNGEL DEL ARCO BLANCO IN THE HISTAGRA SERIES ‘UNCOMFORTABLE PAST’

On Monday 9 February at 7 pm in the Abanca Lecture Hall on Rúa Nova, Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco, Professor of History at the University of Granada, will give a lecture entitled “The Silenced Famine of the Franco Regime”, in which he will present his latest work, La hambruna española (The Spanish Famine, Crítica, 2025).

This lecture is organised in collaboration with the Ateneo de Santiago.

About the book:

The Franco regime lasted long enough to build myths and sculpt silences. One of the biggest myths had to do with the so-called ‘years of hunger’: the long post-war period (1939-1952) that marked the lives of Spaniards after the Spanish Civil War. With a stagnant economy and widespread misery, the dictatorship blamed the disasters of war, international isolation and the supposed ‘persistent drought’. This book dismantles the Franco regime's justifications, but also reveals one of its greatest secrets: in some of those years, a devastating famine took place (1939-42 and 1946) that claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Spaniards. As with other European famines of the interwar period, Franco's famine was caused by political factors related to the economy adopted, the proximity to the Axis in World War II, the existence of a dictatorial regime and widespread corruption

About the author:

Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Granada. His research focuses on the Civil War, the post-war period and fascism, addressing topics such as political attitudes, repression, memory and famine under Franco. His work has appeared in national and international scientific journals such as the Journal of Contemporary History, European History Quarterly, Contemporary European History, Ayer, Historia Agraria and Historia Social. Among his most notable works are: Los años del hambre. Historia y memoria de la posguerra franquista (2020), (together with Peter Anderson) Franco's Famine. Malnutrition, Disease and Starvation in Post-Civil War Spain (2021) and the monograph Cruces de Memoria y Olvido. Los monumentos a los caídos de la guerra civil española (1936-2021) (2022). His latest publication is La hambruna española (2025).

About the event:

Date: 09/02/2026

Title: The Silenced Famine of Francoism

Speaker: Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco

Time: 7 p.m.

Venue: Aula Abanca (R/ Nova). Ateneo de Santiago