The Nuevo Estado is a collective work including separate essays on all the major aspects of national life: internal political structure, foreign affairs, Church-state relations, defense, culture, industrial and agricultural policy, and política social. Inevitably there is some overlap and much repetition of general principles. The volume is most useful for summaries of laws and policies, and for an official interpretation of the manner in which those laws relate to the fundamental principles of the Movimiento Nacional. The authors all hold high positions in the academic and administrative hierarchy, so that what they say is an authoritative expression of the intentions and outlook of the regime.
The book has the weaknesses of any official digest in a country where freedom of discussion is extremely limited. The chapter on literature is little more than a list of names and titles. The chapter on política agraria gives much information on the progress of irrigation, reforestation, and mechanization. It summarizes several colonization laws, but it gives virtually no idea to what extent the laws have been applied, and no hint concerning standards of living and the social situation of the peasants. The chapter on industry lists production statistics in the several branches, but gives no such clarifying discussion of development problems as one finds in the annual reports of the Banco Central or in UNESCO documents. The chapter on education, on the other hand, discusses frankly the reluctance of the municipalities to spend money on public schools, the elitist theories which hamper the expansion of facilities, and the religious-secular tensions which now as in the past have impeded school development.
Certain themes appear in almost every essay: the injustice of the diplomatic-economic isolation to which Spain was subjected in the 1940’s, the determination to modernize the country in accordance with Spanish traditions which are neither liberal-capitalist nor Marxist, the emphasis on the order and social peace which have subsisted in Spain for over twenty years. The schematic, official nature of the exposition means that the volume does not deal with many of the realities of Spanish life, but for the same reason it is indispensable as a guide to the official thought of the regime.
Siglo XX is an anthology of documentary materials covering the years 1900-1923, arranged chronologically but without index. Major attention is given to news of the royal family and to military events. ABC is the most important single source quoted. In the April, 1962, issue of The American Eistorical Review I gave several specific examples of the incomplete view of these years which results from the limited choice of topics and sources. The fundamental trouble with this book is that even as source material on conservative aspects of Spanish society it is too poorly edited to be useful to a historian.
