My dad wants to write something with me set in the Spanish Civil War. I have been dabbling with historic fiction set in another time and place, and have assembled an incredible collection of books for my research that are totally irrelevant to the project dad wants to do.
I'm not an academic - my preference is for autobiographical work or "People's History" genre stuff that is accessible to the masses, like Pierre Berton. I can get through dry academic text books but it takes me forever. I'm particularly interested in the lives of the working / fighting classes, including women, and not as interested in the lives of rulers and generals.
Can you help me?
This is a tad outside my capabilities - I tend to avoid the kind of thing you want, because once you study something long enough you get petty about inaccuracies. There's a lot out of popular history out there on Spain and anti-fascism, though gender continues to be a bit neglected.
For an overview, Antony Beevor's The Battle for Spain is pretty accessible, although not really the view from below you seem to be after. For a more condensed view, Helen Graham's The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction does what it says on the tin, and all of the VSIs do. If you're interested in the foreigner volunteers, a book like Richard Baxell's Unlikely Warriors is a nice blend of readable and scholarly. Similarly, Paul Prestons Doves of War is a useful biographical study of four women and their involvement in the conflict, though generally they weren't strictly speaking 'working class'. Mary Nash, Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War (Denver, 1995) gives a broader overview, but it's been a while since i looked at it and can't remember how accessible the text is. I've had Martha Ackelsberg’s Free Women of Spain recommended to me in this context, but haven't yet read it.