The exhibition "Biblioteca en guerra" (Library during war), which took place at the Madrid National Library from November 2005 until February of this year, was a work of outstanding merit thanks to the care of Blanca Calvo and Ramon Salaberria. The silence has been broken for the first time regarding a generation of librarians who were forced into flight, who were exiled or put to death - those librarians who were working for the Spanish Republic during the Civil War (1936-1939). Fortunately, a library history that reveals extraordinary modernity is coming to light. Despite innumerable difficulties in those years, Spanish libraries underwent great developments, from the point of view of both collections conservation (in war time) and of library promotion and marketing. Two opposing ways of conceiving culture and the library competed with and fought against one another: just as the Republic became involved in the building of new libraries and fostering a new concept of the library, nationalistic Spain went to great lengths to purge and censor library collections. However, for many years, even after Franco's death, these wartime damages remained voluntarily buried. Only today has the new Spain decided to look its past - including its library history " straight in the eye.