[xv] This work has been prepared in an attempt to meet the need for a reasonably full and up-to-date comprehensive history of Spain and Portugal. It has been conceived both for use as a textbook in courses on Spanish history and as an interpretive account for other readers. It is based on the most recent scholarly literature in the field, and brief bibliographies for each chapter are appended. This account deals with political and institutional history and with social and economic history, but does not attempt to treat literary and art history in any detail, for these are the only aspects of Hispanic affairs that are intensively studied outside the peninsula, while it is to remedy deficiencies in the treatment of the ordinary areas of Spanish and Portuguese history that the work was undertaken. Similarly, it does not deal in detail with the rise of the Spanish and Portuguese empires overseas, about which there is an abundant literature, particularly with regard to Spanish America.
    I want especially to thank four people for their assistance: C. Julian Bishko, dean of Spanish historical studies in the United States, who read the first three-fifths of the manuscript with great care and saved me from many mistakes; Juan J. Linz, who has done so much to stimulate contemporary Spanish political and social studies and has greatly influenced my thinking about recent Spanish history; Thomas Glick, who read the entire manuscript and offered some important [xvi] new insights; and my wife Julia, who made many suggestions about the preparation of the manuscript and assisted in a multitude of ways. Though they have not been able to rescue my work from all its shortcomings--for which of course I bear responsibility--I am extremely grateful to them.

Madison, Wisconsin
July 1972
Stanley G. Payne