The emphasis in this book is upon the interaction between the army and the governments of Spain from 1803 to 1816, not on the mechanisms of Army life in that institution. The reason is that there's not very much documentation in usable forms for the day-to-day life, and the political focus is the subject of much writing at the time. Spain was in a state of enormous upheaval, and the rifts in the society reverberate to this day.
From a modern English speaking world perspective, Spain was a tyrannical mess in 1808, and had been behind the times since 1660. The economy was very agricultural, and depended on regular imports of precious metals from the Americas to stay afloat. With the armament industry one of the few areas where money was generated locally, there was no reason to establish an economy that could feed, house or clothe an army, and the civilian population was reduced to subsistence farming even in times of peace. Given a choice, Spain should have stayed out of the wars of the Napoleonic period entirely. It didn't get that chance!
After the patriotic rising of 1808, Spain was left with an overblown regular army, with massive political ambitions struggling fiercely with an entrenched nobility, divided between royalist and liberal factions, who fought persistently on the political front, while trying to rid their country of a foreign invader, and another intrusive army, that of their British liberators. When Napoleon's men were driven away, then the exiled King returned, only to fiercely punish the liberal parts of those who had suffered for the royal return. The next century and beyond the fight continued to further damage the Spanish state.
The book is necessary, but hasn't got the right title. ( )