This is not the Spain which has drawn historians, neither is it the Spain of many people’s dreams: the olive and citrus groves of the Mediterranean, the beaches and white-washed villages. This is the story of a family from one of many villages in the poor mountain regions as they lived through the troubled times of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries which brought unrest, war and finally a long dictatorship lasting until Franco’s death in 1975. On Franco’s death the Spanish people faced an enormous challenge; the way forward would not be easy. How could they cast off their troubled past? What was it like for a foreigner arriving in the country over forty years ago as Spain struggled to find its way as a modern European state?An attempted coup d’état, terrorism, the declining power of the church and vertiginous social changes affected everyone’s lives. Spain today is a very different country, yet something of the turbulent past remains. Echoes from a Vanished World is a thought-provoking and unique social history book on Spain during a particularly convulsive era.