Today there is no doubt about the usefulness of the research on local history to help improve our historiography. As Ismael Saz suggests, "a well understood local history and a wide international approach can combine to widen our knowledge about one of the fundamental periods of our history at local, national and general scale". The author, who is expert in German, French and Italian historiography on contemporary dictatorships, undertakes from this point of view the study of the Valencian municipality of Catarroja during the first period of Franco's dictatorship. Catarroja was economically and demographically one of the most important villages in the Horta Sud area. First, the author makes a comparison between the mechanisms of Francoist local powers and the ones of Fascism and, above all, the mechanisms of Nazi dictatorship. Next, the author revisits the World War I and the Civil War and focuses on the establishment of dictatorship (1939-1943), the long post-war period (1943-1950) and the 1950s (from autarchy to desarrollismo). Finally, there is a very valuable annex on the murders committed in Catarroja during the war. Thus, it deals with one of the most interesting and polemic periods of our recent history. Such controversy still lingers and, in fact, the book that won Benvingut Oliver Prize on Historic Research in 1995 and had to be published by the Town Council of Catarroja was cast into oblivion the day after the so-called Spanish centre-right party was elected.