Gustavo Martín Asensio. The Comintern in Spain before the Civil War. Red Tide Rising. Bloomsbury Academic, London [etc.] 2024. xviii, 235 pp. £85.00 (E-book: £76.50.)

This book has a polemical, almost hectoring tone, which this reviewer found unsettling.There is scarcely any historian of modern Spain who escapes censure for underestimating the extent of the communist threat to Spanish democracy on the eve of the Civil War.This is unfortunate, for, putting aside the polemics, Martn Asensio has assembled useful information about the importance of communist front organizations in the aftermath of the 1934 October insurrection and the first months of the Popular Front Government.There is little point in summarizing the polemics.