The Transition to Democracy
After Franco's death, reformers from the regime and the democratic opposition negotiate a peaceful passage to parliamentary democracy, a new constitution and regional autonomy.
- The Triumph of Democracy in Spain — Paul Preston, Methuen (1986)
- Juan Carlos of Spain: Self-Made Monarch — Charles Powell, Macmillan (1996)
- Spanish Constitution (official English translation) — Cortes Generales, La Moncloa / Government of Spain (1978)
- Democracy Without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting — Omar G. Encarnación, University of Pennsylvania Press (2014)
- Spain: A History — Raymond Carr (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
When Franco died, few expected democracy so fast. King Juan Carlos kept Franco’s last prime minister at first, then in July 1976 appointed Adolfo Suárez, a young official from inside the regime. Suárez persuaded the Francoist parliament to vote itself out of existence with the Political Reform Law, approved in a referendum in December 1976.
- The Triumph of Democracy in Spain — Paul Preston, Methuen (1986)
- Adolfo Suárez — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
1977: the decisive year
The year was full of danger. In January far-right gunmen murdered five people at a labour lawyers’ office on Calle Atocha in Madrid; the Communist Party’s disciplined, silent funeral march helped convince many that it could be legalised, which Suárez did on Holy Saturday, 9 April, to the fury of the army. On 15 June 1977 Spain held its first free general election since 1936. That autumn the parties signed the Moncloa Pacts on the economy, and parliament passed an Amnesty Law freeing political prisoners and also, in effect, protecting officials of the dictatorship from prosecution. The unwritten agreement not to use the past as a political weapon came to be called the “pact of forgetting”.
- The Triumph of Democracy in Spain — Paul Preston, Methuen (1986)
- Democracy Without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting — Omar G. Encarnación, University of Pennsylvania Press (2014)
- Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through a Country's Hidden Past — Giles Tremlett, Faber & Faber (2006)
The Constitution
A cross-party committee drafted a constitution by consensus, and voters approved it on 6 December 1978, with about 88% voting yes. It made Spain a parliamentary monarchy, ended the Catholic Church’s status as the state religion while acknowledging its role, and in Article 2 balanced “the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation” with “the right to self-government of the nationalities and regions” that make it up. By 1983 the whole country was divided into seventeen autonomous communities, with Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia first in line. In the Basque Country, where the main nationalist party urged abstention, fewer than half of registered voters took part.
- Spanish Constitution (official English translation) — Cortes Generales, La Moncloa / Government of Spain (1978)
- The Triumph of Democracy in Spain — Paul Preston, Methuen (1986)
- Spain: A History — Raymond Carr (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
23-F
On 23 February 1981, as parliament voted on a new prime minister, Civil Guard Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero burst into the chamber with armed guards, firing shots into the ceiling, while tanks rolled into the streets of Valencia. In the early hours, King Juan Carlos appeared on television in uniform to order the army to uphold the constitutional order, and the coup collapsed. In October 1982 Felipe González’s Socialists won a landslide, and power passed peacefully to the former opposition. Many date the end of the Transition to that moment.
- Juan Carlos of Spain: Self-Made Monarch — Charles Powell, Macmillan (1996)
- The Triumph of Democracy in Spain — Paul Preston, Methuen (1986)
The Transition was not bloodless: hundreds died in ETA attacks, far-right violence and police actions in these years. But compared with what many feared, it was a peaceful passage, and for most Spaniards of that generation it remains a source of quiet pride.
- The Triumph of Democracy in Spain — Paul Preston, Methuen (1986)
- Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy — Paddy Woodworth, Yale University Press (2002)
A remarkable act of national reconciliation: former enemies compromised, avoided a new civil war and built one of Europe's most stable democracies, admired and studied around the world.
- The Triumph of Democracy in Spain — Paul Preston, Methuen (1986)
- Juan Carlos of Spain: Self-Made Monarch — Charles Powell, Macmillan (1996)
Democracy was bought with silence. The 1977 Amnesty Law shielded the dictatorship's crimes, the Francoist judiciary and police were never purged, and victims were told to forget.
- Democracy Without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting — Omar G. Encarnación, University of Pennsylvania Press (2014)
- Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through a Country's Hidden Past — Giles Tremlett, Faber & Faber (2006)
Autonomy was real progress, but the Constitution's "indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation", written under the watchful eye of the army, left no legal route for nations within Spain to decide their own future.
- Catalan Nationalism: Francoism, Transition and Democracy — Montserrat Guibernau, Routledge (2004)
- Catalonia since the Spanish Civil War: Reconstructing the Nation — Andrew Dowling, Sussex Academic Press (2013)
Why it matters today
The 1978 Constitution is the framework of today's Spain: a parliamentary monarchy with seventeen self-governing regions. For many Spaniards the Transition is a source of pride; for a younger left and for many Catalan and Basque nationalists, the "1978 regime" is a pact that protected Francoists and froze the national question.