People of the Revolution and the USSR

1941–

The Spanish Civil War historian who demolished Francoist myths with archival evidence

There is not a single conservative or neo-Francoist historian who does not manipulate the evidence; what they sell are bold-faced lies.

A historian, economist and diplomat who has systematically dismantled Francoist historical narratives through archival research on the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. Beginning with his investigation of Nazi Germany's financing of Franco's rising while a graduate student in Bonn, he demolished the myth of the 'Moscow Gold' in 1976 and went on to show, in a four-volume Republic series, how arms embargoes and international diplomacy decided the war. When the Royal Academy of History published a national biographical dictionary in 2011 that failed even to call Franco a dictator, Viñas rallied thirty historians and produced a 976-page counter-dictionary, En el combate por la Historia (2012), a watershed in Spain's 'history wars'.

1948–

Former Maoist urban guerrilla turned Francoist revisionist historian who reignited Spain's Civil War debates

Asked in a 2008 interview whether he condemned Franco's regime, he refused, declaring that "Franco deserves the gratitude and recognition of the majority of Spaniards."

A controversial Spanish writer who evolved from a founding member of the Maoist urban guerrilla group GRAPO into Francoism's most prominent revisionist historian. He argues that the left, not the right, bore primary responsibility for the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, contending that the Socialist-led insurrection of October 1934 was the conflict's true beginning. His 2003 bestseller Myths of the Civil War sold 150,000 copies and ignited the post-2000 revisionism debates, drawing praise from Stanley G. Payne and fierce rejection from mainstream historians including Paul Preston and Alberto Reig Tapia.