Burnett Bolloten, 78; Spanish Civil War Expert

Burnett Bolloten, who observed the Spanish Civil War first-hand as a wire service correspondent and then wrote three scholarly books that made him one of the world’s foremost experts on that conflict, died Tuesday in Sunnyvale, Calif.

He was 78 and was honorary curator of the Spanish Archival Collection at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Bolloten’s first definitive work on the war, “The Grand Camouflage,” was published in 1961. He followed that in 1979 with “The Spanish Revolution.” His final work was “The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution,” completed shortly before his death.

He spent years assembling newspapers, journals, pamphlets and books on the war. The resultant 2,500 books and pamphlets, 12,000 bound newspaper volumes and 125,000 frames of microfilm were donated to Stanford.