The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875-1998

📖 The Scoop

A comprehensive history of one of Spain's key institutions during a long and conflictive period. Generations of secular critics saw the modern Spanish Church as a monolithic, efficiently organized institution intent on imposing a highly traditional Catholicism on a society undergoing rapid social, economic and political change. However, the rise of liberalism, republicanism, socialism, anarchism and intellectual pluralism challenged the clergy's view that Spain had always been and would always be Catholic. The Church attempted to modernize its strategy by creating trade unions, an expanded school system, agrarian associations, and a modern confessional press, while maintaining its privileges as the established Church of the State until the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931.

Genre: History / Europe / Spain (fancy, right?)