Contested Care: Medicine and Surgery during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

This thesis traces the important role played by Spanish medical personnel, particularly surgeons, in the development and organisation of their own medical services during the Spanish Civil War. This study, therefore, is not strictly a history of medicine during the conflict, nor does it seek to further explore international efforts in this regard; rather it analyses through an examination of the medical personnel involved on both sides, the causes, treatments and long term consequences of injury and trauma, including that of exile, on the wounded of the Spanish Civil War.

This thesis, by picking over the bones of a wide body of literature and by engaging with a variety of different sources, forms an interlocking part of a new historiographical strand examining the origins and evolution of a traumatic conflict whose repercussions continue to be felt throughout Spain. Through its engagement with a diversity of sources, its analysis of the relationship between medicine and propaganda, and through an inclusive examination of the contribution made by Spanish medical professionals across Spain during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, this thesis provides its own unique historical perspective of a conflict whose living legacy of trauma and of wounds unhealed is still alive in Spain today.