In the following decades, the author produced several other notable works on the contemporary history of Spain and fascism. In 1967, he published Franco’s Spain, a work characterised by a critical view of the construction of the Franco dictatorship, albeit from a perspective that sought to be detached and balanced (Idem, pp. xi-xii). In his subsequent works, he consolidated his position as a conservative historian, critical of the Republican left in the civil war and promoting a perspective increasingly closer to right-wing narratives. His profound criticism of the Spanish fascist right was counterbalanced by his accusation that it was the left that initiated the violence, which he defended above all after the publication of his third work, The Spanish Revolution, published in 1970. In his book The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism, published in 2004, the author argued that the Spanish Civil War was not part of the struggle between demoliberalism and fascism, but rather a confrontation between left-wing revolutionism and right-wing counter-revolution (Idem, p. xiv).

In 1973, Payne published a work focusing not only on Spain but also on Portugal. A History of Spain and Portugal was published in two volumes, in which the author took an objective and comparative approach to the modern and contemporary history of these two countries. In the second volume of this work, the author presented what would become his perspective on contemporary Portuguese authoritarianism. According to him, the coup of 28 May 1926 had produced a dictatorship that turned not into a fascist regime, but rather into a conservative, traditionalist and corporatist authoritarianism, a view shared by most other foreign experts on the Estado Novo (A History of Portugal and Spain, vol. II, 1973, pp. 663-684).

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | (Pdf)