Nigel Townson teaches history at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is the author and editor of numerous works on modern Spain, including the award-winning The Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Centrist Politics under the Second Republic, 1931-1936 (2000), Spain Transformed: The Late Franco Dictatorship, 1959-1975 (2007), and Is Spain Different? A Comparative Look at the 19th and 20th Centuries (2015). He has also edited the work of the exiled Spanish writer Arturo Barea.