[2] The book's title is a metaphorical allusion to the famous Battle of Salamis in which a joint Greek fleet defeated the Persians.

Soldiers of Salamis has sometimes been viewed in the context of a national debate in the first decade of the twenty-first century about how the Spanish Civil War should be commemorated.

[3] The year 2000 saw the foundation of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory which grew out of the quest by a sociologist, Emilio Silva-Barrera, to locate and identify the remains of his grandfather, who was shot by Nationalist forces in 1936.

During the interview Cercas is told the story of how Mazas's escapes from execution by the Republicans at the end of the Spanish Civil War with the help of a lone soldier.

Cercas presents him as a writer and idealist of the Falange Española and close collaborator of José Antonio Primo de Rivera.

Helped by several deserters, Mazas evades the retreating Republican forces and eventually returns to Nationalist custody where he became an important propagandist for Francoist Spain.