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From Franco to Freedom The Roots of

the Transition to Democracy in Spain


1962 1982 Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer
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FROM FRANCO
TO FREEDOM
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page ii

ii LEFTTT

Sussex Studies in Spanish History

General Editor: Nigel Townson, Universidad Complutense, Madrid


Consultant Editor: José Álvarez-Junco, Universidad Complutense, Madrid
Advisory Editors: Pamela Radcliff, University of California, San Diego
Tim Rees, University of Exeter

José Álvarez-Junco, The Emergence of Mass Politics in Spain: Populist


Demagoguery and Republican Culture, 1890–1910.
Avi Astor, Rebuilding Islam in Contemporary Spain: The Politics of Mosque
Establishment, 1976–2013.
Tom Buchanan, The Impact on the Spanish Civil War on Britain: War, Loss
and Memory.
Andrew Dowling, Catalonia since the Spanish Civil War: Reconstructing the
Nation.*
Ferran Gallego and Francisco Morente (eds), The Last Survivor: Cultural
and Social Projects Underlying Spanish Fascism, 1931–1975.
Hugo García, The Truth about Spain!: Mobilizing British Public Opinion,
1936–1939.
Irene González González, Spanish Education in Morocco, 1912–1956:
Cultural Interactions in a Colonial Context .
Aitana Guia, The Muslim Struggle for Civil Rights in Spain: Promoting
Democracy through Migrant Engagement, 1985–2010.
Patricia Hertel, The Crescent Remembered: Islam and Nationalism on the
Iberian Peninsula.
Silvina Schammah Gesser, Madrid’s Forgotten Avant-Garde: Between
Essentialism and Modernity.
David Messenger, L’Espagne Républicaine: French Policy and Spanish
Republicanism in Liberated France.
Javier Moreno-Luzón, Modernizing the Nation: Spain during the Reign of
Alfonso XIII, 1902–1931.
Inbal Ofer, Señoritas in Blue: The Making of a Female Political Elite in
Franco’s Spain.
Stanley G. Payne, Alcalá Zamora and the Failure of the Spanish Republic,
1931–1936.
Mario Ojeda Revah, Mexico and the Spanish Civil War: Domestic Politics
and the Republican Cause.
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page iii

Raanan Rein and Joan Maria Thomàs (eds), Spain 1936: Year Zero.
Elizabeth Roberts, “Freedom, Faction, Fame and Blood”: British Soldiers of
Conscience in Greece, Spain and Finland.
Julius Ruiz, ‘Paracuellos’: The Elimination of the ‘Fifth Column’ in
Republican Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.
Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer (ed.), From Franco to Freedom: The Roots of
the Transition to Democracy in Spain, 1962–1982.
Guy Setton, Spanish–Israeli Relations, 1956–1992: Ghosts of the Past and
Contemporary Challenges in the Middle East.
Emilio Grandío Seoane, A Balancing Act: British Intelligence in Spain
during the Second World War.
Manuel Álvarez Tardío, José María Gil-Robles: Leader of the Catholic Right
during the Spanish Second Republic.
Manuel Álvarez Tardío and Fernando del Rey Reguillo (eds.), The Spanish
Second Republic Revisited.
Nigel Townson, The Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Centrist Politics under
the Second Republic, 1931–1936.
Nigel Townson (ed.), Is Spain Different?: A Comparative Look at the 19th
and 20th Centuries.
* Published in association with the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary
Spanish Studies and the Catalan Observatory, London School of Economics.
A full list of titles in the series is available on the Press website.
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iv LEFTTT
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Rightt v

FROM FRANCO
TO FREEDOM
The Roots of the
Transition to Democracy in Spain,
1962–1982

EDITED BY
Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer
TRANSLATED BY
Nigel Townson
Introduction and organization of this volume copyright © Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer,
2019; all other chapters copyright © Sussex Academic Press, 2019.

The right of Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer to be identified as Editor of this work, and
Nigel Townson as the translator, has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published in the Sussex Academic e-Library, 2019.


SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS
PO Box 139, Eastbourne BN24 9BP, UK

Distributed worldwide by
Independent Publishers Group (IPG)
814 N. Franklin Street
Chicago, IL 60610, USA

ISBN 9781845198503 (Hardcover)


ISBN 9781782845423 (Pdf )

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data


A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This e-book text has been prepared for electronic viewing. Some features, including
tables and figures, might not display as in the print version, due to
electronic conversion limitations and/or copyright strictures.
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Rightt vii

Contents

Preface by Series Editor Nigel Townson 1

1 Introduction: From Franco to Freedom 1


Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer

2 The Sociologists and the Analysis of Social (and Political) 17


Change in Spain between 1962 and 1982
María Luz Morán Calvo-Sotelo

3 The Blue Factor: Falangist Political Culture under the Franco 41


Regime and the Transition to Democracy , 1962–1977
Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer

4 Voting under Franco: The Elections of the Family 70


Procuradores to the Cortes and the Limits to the Opening Up
of Francoism
Carlos Domper Lasús

5 Public Opinion and Political Culture in a Post-Fascist 101


Dictatorship (1957–77)
Javier Muñoz Soro

6 Marcelismo (and Late Francoism): Unsuccessful 137


Authoritarian Modernisations
Manuel Loff

7 Paving the Way for the Transition? The Administrative 175


Reform of the late 1950s
Nicolás Sesma Landrin

8 The Dismantling of Spanish ‘Fascism’: Socio-Political 208


Attitudes during the Late Franco Dictatorship (1962–76)
Claudio Hernández Burgos

The Editor and Contributors & Index 231–251


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Series Editor’s Preface

Research into the Franco dictatorship has tended to focus until quite
recently on the 1940s. This is partly due to the inherent fascination of
these years, as they include the regime’s struggle for survival during the
Second World War, the post-war period, and the early part of the Cold
War. It is also because the 1940s can be seen as a continuation of the Civil
War of 1936–39, the central trauma of twentieth-century Spain, as
illustrated by the dictatorship’s determination to keep alive the memory
of the conflict, by its deliberate division of society into the victorious and
the vanquished, by the continuing repression of the republicans, and not
least by its alignment with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the
Second World War. Support for the Axis was shown by Franco’s Spain
joining the Anti-Comintern Pact, by its abandonment of the League of
Nations, and by its material and logistical help during the war, including
sending the Blue Division to the Eastern Front. The extreme isolation of
the Franco regime at the end of the Second World War – when its very
future seemed to hang in the balance – reflected the extent to which it
had identified itself with the fascist cause.
Over the last decade or so more and more attention has been paid to
the last twenty-five years of the dictatorship, especially the 1960s and
1970s, when Spain underwent sweeping economic, social and cultural
change. The overarching objective of From Franco to Freedom is to offer
new perspectives on the period by focusing not so much on the struggle
against the dictatorship as on the myriad conflicts that were unfolding
within it, such as those that were unleashed within the Movement (or
single party), the state-controlled media, the bureaucracy, the Cortes, the
university, and the Catholic Church. The conclusion is that change was
pursued from within the dictatorship not as a means of undertaking a
post-Francoist transition to democracy, but of perpetuating the regime,
albeit in an altered form, after the death of its supreme leader, Francisco
Franco. Highly relevant here is the comparison drawn with the attempt
of Marcello Caetano to guarantee the continuity of the dictatorial regime
in Portugal following the death of António de Oliveira Salazar.
Scrutiny of the anti-democratic aspirations of even those Francoists
who regarded themselves as reformists leads naturally to a reevaluation
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Series Editor’s Preface


Rightt ix
ix

of the debate over the very nature of the Franco regime. During its first
twenty years the dictatorship was generally characterised as ‘fascist’, such
as by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1946. A credible
alternative interpretation did not emerge until the 1960s, when the
US-based Spanish sociologist Juan Linz elaborated the concept of the
‘authoritarian’ regime. While many historians, political scientists, and
sociologists have embraced this definition, others have disputed it on the
grounds that it was a product of the Cold War which implicitly strove to
differentiate between the ‘good’, Western-leaning dictatorships and the
‘bad’ Communist-inspired ones. Linz was effectively accused of legit-
imising the integration of Franco’s Spain into the orbit of the West. Many
of the authors in From Franco to Freedom take the Linz thesis to task by
highlighting the ways in which, and the extent to which, the regime
remained wedded to fascist ideas, practices and aims.
The final goal of From Franco to Freedom is to explore the linkages
between dictatorship and democracy by analysing the impact of initia-
tives taken from within the regime – whether intended or not – on the
Transition, such as the partial opening up of the media, the creation of
neighbourhood and other associations, the adjustment of the Catholic
Church to the imperatives of the Second Vatican Council, or the post-
1975 adaptation of the Movement’s networks to the demands of party
politics. Much of this reflected the often muddled response of the regime
to the economic, social and cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s in a
vain attempt to ensure the continuity of the regime.
From Franco to Freedom therefore furnishes fresh perspectives on the
Franco regime through its focus on the institutions, mentalities and
reforms of the dictatorship itself, through its far-ranging and inter-
disciplinary research, and through its willingness to challenge established
ideas regarding a watershed period in modern Spanish history.
NIGEL TOWNSON
Complutense University
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1
Introduction:
From Franco to Freedom
MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

For the majority of scholars or informed readers interested in the history


of Europe during the 20th century, the story of General Franco’s regime
in Spain during the middle decades of the century is that of an anomaly,
a mixture of fascist imitation and the persistence of traditional and
conservative features embodied in the person of the colonial soldier and
plotter General Franco.1 Study of the regime acquired an intellectual
solidity with the seminal work of Juan Linz – a Spanish political scientist
based at Yale and a reference point in the analysis of democracies in crisis
during the 20th century – who characterised the Franco regime as author-
itarian.2 Except for the work of Stanley Payne and Paul Preston, little new
has made an impact on the international academic community, except
for those researchers specialising in the period. Many scholars in Spain
turned against the Linz definition, insisting on the fascist character of
Francoism (and therefore its perverse character, identifying it with some-
thing as evil as the fascist powers who had been defeated in 1945),
something which appeared to be contradicted by the relative smoothness
with which the transition from the dictatorship to democracy took place
in the late 1970s.3
Later debate on the nature of the regime has emphasised its nascent
fascist character, which was maintained in part throughout its subse-
quent evolution, especially in relation to certain aspects, such as the
power concentrated in the hands of Franco, the mechanisms of repres-
sion and institutional control, and the imposition of certain cultural and
religious values on the population as a whole.4 The fascist political
culture that took shape under Francoism was the result of the conver-
gence of different elements from the radical and fascist-influenced right,
as well as from Catholicism, which permeated all these currents.5 This
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2 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

does not prevent a significant part of the international scholarly


community from continuing to affirm that the Francoist regime was
merely ‘authoritarian’.
Historical revision of the harsh period following the Civil War
(1936–39) advanced by means of two central questions: the repression
and the establishment of the political structures during the early years of
the regime, with the diverse political ‘families’ as the protagonists in the
struggle to control the regime. The studies on the repression were the
logical, moral need of several anti-Francoist generations – indepen-
dently of the side on which their families had fought – to settle accounts
with the regime before coming to terms with a democratic Spain. It was
also the expression of an urgent need to reconstruct the initial steps of
the dictatorship, giving rise to the completion of the first theses in a
context of democratic liberty and reasonable access to the archives. In
addition to these initial investigations there were studies of the cultural
evolution of the regime in all its complexity and of domestic politics,6
including the controversies over the virtually silent liberalism that was
hidden away within a repressed society, but which would flourish in the
1960s, giving rise to elements of change.7 At the end of the 1990s,
however, the second half of the Franco regime remained neglected, but
this has received more and more attention, raising new questions in
relation to the period that begins with the university revolt of 1956 and
the Plan of Stabilisation of 1959.8 For the contributors to this book,
these two events represent turning points – the first being political and
social in nature and the second economic and judicial (the necessity of
a reliable and stable judicial framework) – as they condition any overall
vision of the regime. Francoism has been analysed in its entirety for a
number of years, while aspects such as mentalities, society, politics and
culture in the 1960s and early 1970s have been reconstructed from many
different perspectives.
The research group that presents its results in this volume has endeav-
oured from the beginning to scrutinise those elements of social and
political change which were most closely related to the Transition and the
consolidation of democracy in Spain in the second half of the 1970s and
the early 1980s.9 The aim has been to study in depth those factors that
made it possible to supersede a regime inspired by the fascism of the
interwar period and whose survival of the Second World War made it a
residue of European fascism. The idea has been to identify those aspects
that help provide nuanced explanations that go far beyond the status quo,
above all in terms of the international political sciences, which still frame
the Franco regime in terms of Linz’s paradigm and which, in a few para-
graphs, banish the Spanish experience to the margins of the academic
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Introduction 3

debate. We believe that the analysis of the Spanish case is important not
only in order to reconstruct the trajectory of Spaniards in the 20th
century, but also to understand the reality of European fascism more
clearly, and even the strengths and weaknesses of Europe today.
The ease of the rupture with the Franco regime and that of the corre-
sponding transition to democracy continues to cause admiration (if there
is anything to admire about Spain in these uncertain times). How was it
possible, with the social and personal resources available at the end of the
Civil War, the brutality of the post-War period, the reactionary nature of
the development policies of the 1960s, and the antipathy to all cultural
concerns, to produce new generations that sought reconciliation, that
were able to supersede the worst legacy of the Civil War, and that were
capable of taking on board democratic practices in a difficult economic
context (the oil crisis of 1973 and its delayed but terrible impact on Spain)
and a difficult civil one (the terrorism of ETA and of the extreme right)?
The story of the Transition is one of success – despite the many short-
comings and limitations that can be appreciated in our democracy – and
that is how it was lived by contemporary Spaniards.10 Still, for a number
of years a more critical vision of the Transition and its legacy, which
includes the academic world, has gained ground. This has been a result
of the economic crisis of 2008 and an awareness of the deep-set problems
of Spanish democracy, such as the widespread corruption, territorial
disputes, the limited internal democracy of the parties and so on, above
and beyond the public debates in which history is exploited for current
political gain.11
Many scholars have studied the roots of Spanish democracy in-depth
following the book of 1979 of Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi, Spain:
Dictatorship to Democracy.12 Some of the most recent and suggestive
works explore the development of democratic practices under the
dictatorship as an explanation for the success of the new regime.13 From
the perspective of the political sciences, the political change in Spain has
been important in terms of the ‘Third Wave’ of democratisation, which
included the rest of Southern Europe and, later, Eastern Europe following
the end of Communism in the 1990s.14 In this sense, the great economic,
and therefore social, transformations have been considered an essential
element of the later political change by sociologists, historians and polit-
ical scientists alike in Spain.15 However, the importance of the governing
elites, their divisions and transactions in the transition to democracy was
soon highlighted. In standard works, such as those of Richard Gunther,
Spain is presented as a model case of the political elites in the context of
Southern Europe and Latin America.16 This vision of the importance of
those that controlled the levers of power has been confirmed by recent
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4 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

studies, such as those by Omar Encarnación and others,17 in which the


role of personal strategies and of the established power structures is
underlined at a time of transition to democracy.18 We do not believe that
social mobilisation can be ignored in relation to socio-political change,
but this must be compatible with an analysis and understanding of the
origin and performance of the political elites, as well as of the institutional
mechanisms of the regime from which the transition begins, in order to
comprehend the process of political change.19
In nearly all cases, economic development and the maturing of
society, especially of the urban sectors and of the medium and highly
educated social strata, is crucial in order to understand the change in
mentality and the adoption of democratic values, as shown by the
legendary sociological works of the FOESSA Foundation, together with
those of the companies that carried out pioneering demoscopic and
‘cultural listening’ studies, as María Luz Morán shows in her chapter. The
objective which we set ourselves was to understand the mechanisms that
explain and make intelligible this process of transformation, which took
place within the regime, and to identify the key elements of that process,
but without wishing to attribute to the regime the slightest intention of
promoting democratic participation. On the contrary. If anything is
made evident in the chapters that follow it is that the Francoist regime as
a whole never possessed the vision, generosity or moral fibre to undertake
actions or platforms rooted in reconciliation or with a view to super-
seding the Civil War and the values of the 18th of July 1936, which were
increasingly qualified by the new economic and social context, the
different international framework, and generational change. This was the
reason for the growing separation of the regime from a society that was
capable of establishing mechanisms by which to supersede the Civil War,
of opening up to new realities beyond Spain, and of using extant ideo-
logical and cultural materials as a way of connecting with a changing
world that presented new realities.20 The requisite generosity was shown
by the sons and daughters of the victors in the Civil War,21 but above all
by the offspring of the defeated who were active in the opposition parties,
especially those that operated in a clandestine fashion.22 They ensured
that the anti-Francoist forces embraced reconciliation as one of their
principal strategies, thereby preempting the reformist sectors of the
regime which came to accept dialogue and negotiation at its very end.
Without this generosity, which the regime as a whole never had, except
for a number of personal exceptions – which existed, as shown in this
book – it would not have been possible to supersede the profound wound
of the Civil War and move towards the goal of peacefully recovering
democratic liberties and practices.
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Introduction 5

From sectors linked to the regime, there began to appear during and
after the Transition a series of memoirs by ministers and other authorities
from different periods of the regime that sought to justify their partici-
pation in the dictatorship on the grounds that they were fighting for a
democratic monarchy.23 These self-justificatory memoirs and treatises
have been published throughout the years of democracy, especially with
the rise to power of those conservative sectors linked to Manuel Fraga,
the erstwhile minister of the dictatorship, leader of the opposition to the
socialist governments of Felipe González (1982–96), and, finally, presi-
dent of the autonomous government of Galicia. This meant that many
men from the dictatorship eventually felt comfortable within a democ-
racy which until then had been mainly identified with the values of the
socialists in power and criticism of the dictatorship. The new conserva-
tive wave was spearheaded during the final years of the socialists by a
prominent group of propagandists and journalists who were highly crit-
ical of the Francoist aftermath.24
This vision of the Francoist regime as a modernising force was also
defended, especially from the second half of the 1990s, by some of the
revisionist scholars, who viewed the dictatorship as the creator of the
economic, social, and even political conditions necessary for democ-
racy.25 They ended up by portraying Franco as the ancient patriach of a
country with a tragic history whose goal was the peaceful recovery of
democracy and whose stature as a statesman rivalled that of the architect
of the Restoration system of 1875–1923, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.26
Central to this thesis was the argument that Spain first had to undertake
an economic modernisation that produced a substantial middle class.
Even though the emergence of this middle class was real enough and the
effects of development were positive insofar as they eliminated economic
and social misery, thereby objectively improving the conditions which
made democracy possible after the death of the dictator, this thesis
ignores the fact that General Franco led the uprising of 18 July 1936
against the Second Republic, the goal of which was not just the overthrow
of a left-wing government and the repression of a revolutionary
movement, but the destruction of democracy in Spain. The uprising also
prevented any attempt at reform or social transformation, rejected the
cultural and social modernisation of the society of masses that had
merged during the first third of the 20th century, and, finally, implanted
a regime inspired by, and aligned with, the European fascist wave,
represented at the time by Rome and Berlin.
What made Spain peculiar in comparison with the Italian and German
cases, but also in relation to the Vichy experiment in France and the
fascist satellites of Eastern Europe, is that the regime did not fall in 1945.
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6 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

Neither was there an internal war and an occupation by Allied forces, as


in other cases. Hence Spain represented a peculiar case within the context
of post-War Europe: the survival of a fascist-inspired regime, born of an
extremely cruel civil war, under a very different Western European
democratic context. By this time, not only had the fascist wave, despite
its enormous popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, receded, but also the
fascist regimes had been overthrown after carrying out brutal policies of
extermination and annexation before and during the Second World War.
Fascism and its memory were criminalised and anyone who supported it
was branded a delinquent and a social menace. As a result, Francoism
renounced its roots and drew on other elements of the counterrevolution
of 18 July 1936: a traditional militarism influenced by the African colonial
tradition, a militant and pre-Second Vatican Council Catholicism, and a
conservative authoritarianism based on a long reactionary tradition of
the 19th and first third of the 20th century in Spain, of which Carlist
legitimism was a leading representative. Falangism was reduced to a
residual political structure during the latter half of the 1940s – a latent
force that maintained a presence on the streets and in the institutions –
until its recovery in the 1950s. In any case, it would not have found a place
in the post-War world if it were not for the Cold War.
The replacement of the confrontation that had defined the Second
World War (democracy and Communism versus fascism) with that
between Communism and anti-Communism, and the emergence of a
world divided into two military blocks, explains the survival of the
regime and its incorporation, incomplete and on a minor scale, into the
Western world. The necessity of including itself within the Western
defence system led the regime to set aside its old affinity for the defeated
in the World War and to align itself with the West, while criticising the
latter’s liberalism and its other values. The Francoist regime, which for
many scholars was no longer fascist because the era of fascism had
ended, still based its structure on the führerprinzip (the ‘theory of lead-
ership’), and formally recognised only the single party until 1977 (the
Falange Española y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista or
Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the Juntas of the National Sindicalist
Offensive), always known as the Falange), which possessed an enor-
mous structure at the national and provincial levels (known always as
the ‘Movement’ from the end of the 1950s on). It also kept up its affil-
iative bodies, with a corporative and typically fascist trade-union
structure, and a police network of asfixiating political and social
control. Institutionally, the regime denied the public liberties that
formed part of the 19th century liberal tradition, while reaffirming the
outcome of the Civil War (the triumph of the victors over the
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Introduction 7

vanquished), and consecrating the 18th of July 1936 as a set of values


defined as a ‘crusade’ in terms reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
By contrast, Spanish society was becoming increasingly permeable to
democratic values as a result of the associational experience, participa-
tion in elections (however limited), and the transmission of values and
information by an increasingly diverse media. The latter led to the
emergence of an influential, if minority, sector of public opinion, which
identifed itself neither with the dictatorship nor the discourse of the Civil
War, and whose values were increasingly in consonance with those of
democratic Western Europe despite the civil backwardness which the
regime had engendered. The growing use of the term ‘democracy’ in
public discourse reflects this change.
We believe that the Francoist regime was a gigantic laboratory of
contradictions that had its epicentre in the Falangist doctrine – Spanish
fascism – which, with its highly charged revolutionary discourse, its
appeal to the masses, its defence of social justice, and its political moder-
nity represented a source of tension with the increasingly conservative
political approach of the regime, which sought above all else its own
preservation, not its radicalisation. Moreover, the complexity of the
elements that made up the regime meant that the Catholic sectors had a
growing presence in governmental circles. They were also the ones which
promoted administrative renewal, economic reform and technocratic
political practice, which led to political fights with the Falangists, who
had their own modernising project. Both currents tried to give a direction
to the regime that would ensure their own dominance, above all once the
old age of the dictator converted the regime’s continuity into a major
issue.
By the mid 1960s, and even clearly with the state of exception in 1969,
Francoism was in total crisis, not only because of the advanced age of the
person who embodied the regime, but also because of the absence of any
future project. This had been the case since around 1956, but economic
development, the desire for power of the Falangist leader José Solís Ruiz,
and the project of political technocratic development of the Catholics
linked to the religious group Opus Dei, with the support of Admiral Luis
Carrero Blanco, tried to create a future for the regime, even beyond
Franco. But these hopes were increasingly sidelined in the early 1970s, as
the divorce of the regime became evident at all levels from an increasingly
complex civil society, which aspired to democracy, Europeanisation and
the reconciliation of Spaniards in order to supersede the wounds of the
Civil War. All of this made patent the unreformable nature of the regime.
Political change after the death of the dictator, which formed part of this
socio-political transformation of Spanish society, cannot be understood
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8 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

without taking into account the people, ideas, media and traditions that
helped supersede the legacy of the Civil War and looked to the reconcil-
iation of the Spanish people. If the regime as a whole could not do this,
change could not come about except through the maturing of ideas and
people, taking as its starting point the contradictions unleashed by the
system itself, much to the latter’s regret. This was complemented by the
activities of the external opposition, the historical memory of the
defeated from the Civil War, including the exiles, and the appeal of an
open, democratic and prosperous European society, all of which explains
the manifest consolidation of democracy in Spain. During the last years
of the dictatorship, the importance of the internal and external opposi-
tion grew.27 Without the pressure of a militant minority that struggled
against Francoism the establishment of a democratic regime would not
have been possible. The opening up of the regime by a sector of the
Francoist leadership made its reform possible and therefore its adapta-
tion to an era that was very different to that at its outset. We cannot
understand the process without taking into account the impact of the
contradictions that unfolded within the system and the criticisms that
were made of it, both of which contributed to its delegitimation.
This agitation within the regime’s political class in the 1960s, together
with the effects of economic development – positive in macroeconomic
terms given the growth and urbanisation, but negative insofar as the
major sacrifice was made by the working and popular classes, regional
inequalities grew, and a high price was paid in terms of internal and
external emigration – and the cultural elements generated by the most
dynamic sectors of the Falangist university world, produced a growing
disaffection.28 The original political and cultural reference points of
Francoism were replaced by new ones related to the Marxism of the
university elites, an interest in the non-aligned regimes of the Third
World, and a more open press following the Press Law of 1966, which
abolished prior censorship. Equally, the non-competitive elections which
Francoism staged, such as the municipal elections for the one-third of
councillors who represented the families, the trade union elections and
above all the elections for the procuradores or national deputies for the
‘family third’ in 1967 and 1971, signaled an element of participation,
which, like the referendums of 1947 and 1966, were designed to consol-
idate the dictatorship and show the world the support enjoyed by the
regime. Still, the critical sectors of the regime also took advantage of these
loopholes to advance their cause. The university lecturers and intellec-
tuals within the structures of the regime were conscious of the changes
and challenges of the future, which they tried to express by renovating
the political discourse. All of this, from above and from below, came up
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Introduction 9

against the immobilism of Franco himself and the inertia of a regime with
a DNA that was fundamentally incompatible with democracy. We found
ourselves here in a grey area, once that merits an in-depth anlysis and the
effort to explain individual and collective behaviour. This is because
democracy is built upon the available elements, which in many cases are
related to a process of socialisation regarding the values of the victors in
the Civil War, to their own evolution, and to internal and external factors
which modify behaviour and explain processes of maturing, as well as
social and political change.
The importance of these changes in Spanish society were undeniable
during the 1960s. Also significant was the appearance of a late Francoist
reformism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which is not identifiable in
terms of a particular group or sector, but involved disparate and disperse
initiatives which emerged from within Francoism and ended up in a
regime of a different nature, but which failed time after time until the Law
of Political Reform of 1976. As in the case of Marcelism in Portugal, the
boundary between this reformism and the efforts at re-legitimising the
dictatorship were very nebulous, as shown by the hackneyed case of
‘political development’. This revealed the contradictory character of
transformations which did not defend anything approaching a demo-
cratic reform, but which nonetheless helped to create the conditions for
change.
In this book we endeavour to offer new elements in order to compre-
hend the end of the Franco regime and the transition to democracy. This
has been done via the study of elements which were central to the society
of the dictatorship. In addition, we trace their influence on the transition
to democracy and the way in which they conditioned the quality of the
democracy that emerged. This has been achieved by exploring society
‘from above’ and ‘from below’ in the search for the elements that would
allow us to understand more about the processes of social change in
Spain, about the political culture of the late Franco regime, and about the
interactions between the latter and the new democracy. This is not, as a
result, a ‘twilight’ narrative that regards the late Franco regime as the end
of a cycle or a scene of decline. What we seek in the behaviour of a section
of the elites, in their attempts at re-legitimation, in sociological analyses,
in the media and in the socialisation of the masses are the elements that
help us interpret the nature of the change, its roots and its consequences.
When we drew up the research project that led to this book we wanted
to answer these questions and to understand aspects of this society better.
In the first place, the changes in public opinion: the first steps taken in its
evaluation and how was it shaped by the interaction between the youthful
sociologists and a regime increasingly concerned with ‘social listening’?
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10 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

The regime found it difficult to analyse the social situation because of the
inheritance of the Civil War and because its self-perception as the origin
of an indisputable revival of the nation prevented it from questioning its
policies, even though these were repeatedly revealed to be impervious to
any proposal of real change. This is the subject tackled in the chapter by
the sociologist María Luz Morán. The impetus for change could not be
ignored by the regime, which set in motion electoral processes of a corpo-
rative nature, starting with the municipal elections of 1948, in which
some of the councillors were voted into power. Elections were also held
within the official trade union in an effort to make both participation and
the ‘contrast of opinions’ (of which the regime spoke constantly)
realities. Nonetheless, both these and other elections, such as those of
1967 and 1971, failed to forge a path that was at once peculiar but which
could be presented as comparable in representational terms to the
Western political model. The same thing happened with the later initia-
tives to create associations and open up the regime. The use of electoral
mechanisms, analysed in the chapter by Carlos Domper, reveals the
capacity for manipulation of the regime, as well as providing an assess-
ment of the influence of the elections in relation to social mobilisation.
Another essential feature of this process of change was the media. The
press played a fundamental role, thanks in part to the pseudo-space and
contrived debate created amongst the newspapers aligned with the
regime by the Press Law of 1966, but above all due to the appearance of
new media outlets, especially magazines, which provided a systematic
critique of the regime and possessed a new legitimacy. Television was one
of the principal weapons of the regime. This launched propaganda
campaigns, but always within a programming context dominated by
consumerism and depoliticisation. It also promoted the figure of prince
Juan Carlos, chosen as succesor to Franco in 1969, under the directorship
of Adolfo Suárez. A foremost feature of the dictatorship’s last decade, as
studied in the chapter of the leading specialist Javier Muñoz Soro, was
the role played by the regime’s intellectuals, including propagandists,
journalists or writers, especially those that reinvented the slogans of
Francoism in an attempt to ensure its survival in the face of a growing
disaffection amongst the new generations of Spaniards.
The final moments of the Francoist regime coincided with the crisis
of the Estado Novo in Portugal in the midst of a process of full-blown
modernisation under the post-Salazar leadership of Marcelo Caetano.
This attempt at political adaptation is compared in the book to the expe-
rience of the late Franco regime by one of the foremost Portuguese
experts, Manuel Loff. We believe this comparative approach is funda-
mental as a result of the way in which the two processes of the mid 1970s,
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Introduction 11

much like a ‘game of mirrors’, influenced one another, even though they
took place in contexts, and followed paths, that were very different.
This analysis would be incomplete without shedding some light on the
associative processes within the Movement, especially the neighbour-
hood associations and the family ones. These strove to maintain the
purity of the ideals of the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de
Rivera, but they did so outside the official channels and in contact with
sectors that would be involved in the political forces of the Transition.
Analysis of this network, little studied until now (with the exception of
the work by Pamela Radcliff), is not only undertaken both ‘from above’
and ‘from below’, but also rejects all preconceived notions of the regime
and the opposition. The chapter written by Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer
endeavours to trace the complex landscape of the political associations,
the activities of the so-called ‘Blue [ie Falangist] reformism’, and the
Falangist publications which offered a different message to that of the
regime. These nonconformist publications expressed an interest in an
approach to international relations that was critical of the West and in
the ideological renovation of the Falange that was distinct from the neo-
fascism to be found in Italy.
Nicolás Sesma, a prominent specialist in the intellectual world of the
Francoist elite, scrutinises the rise in the late 1950s of a process of admin-
istrative and legal reform which set the men linked to the Technocrats off
against the Falangists of the Institute of Political Studies, which still
operated as a Francoist think tank. This analysis is linked to the contro-
versial subject of the creation of the rule of law (defended by the regime
itself, but contradicted by the political and judicial arbitrariness) and the
increasing complexity of a public administration that provided legal
security for a more developed society in economic and social terms, later
to be reflected in political terms. This allows us to appreciate the type of
legal and political debates that interested some of the key behind-the-
scenes figures of post-Francoist politics.
Claudio Hernández Burgos has worked in recent years on the expres-
sions ‘from below’ of a society that had to live through the long night of
Francoism. His chapter focuses on the grey zones of society, seeking to
capture the process of political maturing during the final years of the
dictatorship in the neighbourhoods, the neighbourhood associations,
and other initiatives from below. The delegitimation of the regime took
place from below, but it was taken advantage of from above for other
ends.
The Francoist regime cannot be seen as a phenomenon isolated from
the rest of Europe. Its birth is a product of interwar Europe, its survival
and consolidation was due to the anti-Communism of the Western
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12 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

powers during the Cold War, and its evolution and crisis must be under-
stood in terms of the changing international context of the 1960s and
’70s. During these years the Spanish people were subject to influences and
processes that cannot be disconnected from the West. A close, if sectorial,
look at the last fifteen or twenty years of the Franco regime, as we have
done in this book, offers a different and more complex perspective on
Francoism, its evolution, its contradictions, and, above all, provides clues
that allow us to understand more fully the rebirth of democracy in Spain
in the mid 1970s and the consolidation of a model integrated into the
Europe of its day.

Notes
1 A detailed account of the changing nature of the regime and its ideological
elements in Miguel Ángel Giménez Martínez, El estado franquista.
Fundamentos ideológicos, bases legales y sistema institucional (Madrid:
Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2014), p. 29 and ff. An
extensive reflection on the origin and political nature of the Franco regime
in Ferrán Gallego, El evangelio fascista. La formación de la cultura política del
franquismo (1930–1950), (Barcelona: Crítica, 2014). A summary of the
initial debates in Manuel Pérez Ledesma, ‘Una Dictadura “por La Gracia de
Dios”’, Historia Social, 20 (1994), pp. 173–93. See also Ismael Saz, “Algunas
consideraciones a propósito del debate sobre la naturaleza del franquismo
y el lugar histórico de la dictadura”, in Ismael Saz, Fascismo y Franquismo
(Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 2004), pp. 245–64. An up-to-date
contextualisation of the debates over the conceptualisation of fascism in
Joan Anton Mellón (ed.), El fascismo clásico (1919–1945) y sus epígonos
(Madrid: Tecnos, 2012).
2 Juan José Linz, ‘An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain’, in Erick
Allardt and Yrjö Littunen (eds.), Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems:
Contributions to Comparative Political Sociology (Helsinki: The Academic
Bookstore, 1964). See also the complete works of Linz, edited by José Ramón
Montero and Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Juan José Linz: Obras escogidas, 7 vols.
(Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2008–2013), as
well as the chapter in the present volume by María Luz Morán.
3 Although it became customary to speak of the ‘exemplary’ and ‘peaceful’
transition to democracy in Spain after the death of General Franco, the
period was characterised by a great deal of tension and much violence, as
reflected in works such as those of Mariano Sánchez Soler, La transición
sangrienta. Una historia violenta del proceso democrático en España (1975–
1983) (Barcelona: Península, 2010) and Xavier Casals, La transición
española. El voto ignorado de las armas (Barcelona: Pasado & Presente, 2016).
4 This is the line taken by Ángel Viñas in La otra cara del Caudillo. Mitos y
realidades en la biografía de Franco (Barcelona: Crítica, 2015).
5 Ismael Saz created the term ‘fascistised regime’ as a means of acknowledging
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Introduction 13

the fascist foundations of the dictatorship, while recognising its conservative


elements and the strength of the Catholic sectors throughout. See Saz,
Fascismo y franquismo, and Ismael Saz, Las caras del franquismo (Granada:
Comares, 2013). The complexity of the Francoist political cultures is dealt
with in Manuel Pérez Ledesma and Ismael Saz (eds.), Del franquismo a la
democracia 1936–2013 (Madrid/Zaragoza: Marcial Pons Historia /Prensas
de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2015).
6 A recent historiographical analysis of Francoism by Glicerio Sánchez Recio,
“Dictadura franquista e historiografía del franquismo”, in José Luis de la
Granja (ed.), La España del siglo XX a debate. Homenaje a Manuel Tuñón de
Lara (Madrid: Tecnos, 2017), p. 189 and ff. There are many thematic or
sectorial accounts of the period, but there is not sufficient space here to offer
an overview of all the research. One of the best sources is the excellent
synthesis of Borja de Riquer, La dictadura de Franco, vol. 9 of Josep Fontana
y Ramón Villares (dirs.), Historia de España (Barcelona: Crítica/Marcial
Pons, 2010).
7 Important here are the works of Santos Juliá, such as Historia de las dos
Españas (Madrid: Taurus, 2004), and the books of Jordi Gracia, such as
Estado y Cultura. El despertar de una conciencia crítica bajo el franquismo,
1940–1962 (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006) and La resistencia silenciosa,
Fascismo y cultura en España (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2004). An up-to-date
vision of the Falange throughout the regime can be found is Miguel Ángel
Ruiz Carnicer (ed.), Falange. Las culturas políticas del fascismo en la España
de Franco (1936–1975) (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2013).
8 An outstanding volume on the subject is Nigel Townson (ed.), Spain
Transformed: The Late Franco Dictatorship, 1959–75 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010). See also Glicerio Sánchez Recio (ed.), Eppure si muove.
La percepción de los cambios en España (1959–1975) (Madrid: Biblioteca
Nueva, 2008). Arguably one of the best books on the later Franco regime is
Carme Molinero and Pere Ysàs, La anatomía del franquismo. De la supervi-
vencia a la agonía, 1945–1977 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2008). See also Ismael Saz
(ed.), Crisis y descomposición del franquismo, Ayer, nº 68, 2007 (4).
9 This project, HAR-2012-36528, has been financed by the Spanish Ministry
of the Economy and Competition.
10 Spaniards regarded the Transition as a sucess from the moment that a
pluralistic parliament was elected in the general election of June 1977. This
perception was reaffirmed over the following years, when the Spanish model
became an international reference point. See Josep. M. Colomer, La transi-
ción a la democracia: el modelo español (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1998), p. 9
and ff. In December 1995, twenty years after the death of Franco, a survey
of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (Centre for Sociological
Research), which polled the public on the most varied subjects, revealed that
78.9% of Spaniards regarded the Transition as ‘a source of pride’. Estudio
2201 downloaded from www.cis.es on 13 November 2017.
11 An example of this vision is Emmanuel Rodríguez López, Por qué fracasó la
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14 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

democracia en España. La transición y el régimen del 78 (Madrid: Traficantes


de sueños, 2015).
12 Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979) are the precursors, but the following
list is very long. The following books are worth citing for their academic
impact: Robert P. Clark and Michael H. Hatzel (eds.), Spain in the 1980s:
The Democratic Transition and a New International Role (Cambridge:
Ballinger, 1987); Ramón Cotarelo, Transición democrática y consolidación
democrática: España, 1975–1986 (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones
Sociológicas, 1992); Paul Preston, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain 1969–
1982 (London: Routledge, 1987); José María Maravall, La política de la
transición 1975–1980 (Madrid, Taurus, 1981); and Javier Tusell and Álvaro
Soto (eds.), Historia de la transición 1975–1986 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial,
1996). For a more recent and critical perspective, see Ferrán Gallego, El mito
de la transición. La crisis del franquismo y los orígenes de la democracia (1973–
1977) (Barcelona: Crítica, 2003) and Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, Atado y mal
atado: el suicidio institucional del franquismo y el surgimiento de la democracia
(Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2014). A recent bibliographical revision of the
subject can be found in Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (ed.), Lina Gálvez Muñoz and
Javier Muñoz Soro, España en democracia, 1975–2011, volume 10 of the
Historia de España (Barcelona: Crítica/Marcial Pons, 2017), directed by
Josep Fontana and Ramón Villares, p. 587 and ff.
13 This is the case of associationism, as shown in the book by Pamela Radcliff,
Making Democratic Citizens in Spain: Civil Society and the Popular Origins of
the Transition, 1960–78 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). The
neighbourhood movement is also tackled in Carme Molinero and Pere Ysàs
(eds.), Construint la ciutat democratica: El moviment veïnal durante el tard-
ofranquisme i la transició (Barcelona: Icaria/UAB, 2010). The socialisation
of the young in Falangist values and their later evolution towards anti-
Francoist positions can be found in Alfonso Lazo, Historias falangistas del
sur de España. Una teoría sobre vasos comunicantes, (Sevilla: Ediciones
Espuela de Plata, 2015). A recent approach to the global construction of citi-
zenship in relation to the early social movements in Spain, which
undermined the legitimacy of the Franco regime, in Tamar Groves, Nigel
Townson, Inbal Ofer, and Antonio Herrera, Social Movements and the
Spanish Transition. Building Citizenship in Parishes, Neighbourhoods, Schools
and the Countryside (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
14 Samuel F. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late
Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklhoma Press, 1991) and
Guillermo O Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead
(eds.), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Southern Europe (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 1986.).
15 Víctor Pérez Díaz, The Return of Civil Society: The Emergence of Democratic
Spain (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1998).
16 Richard Gunther, “Spain: the Very Model of the Modern Elite Settlement”,
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Introduction 15

in John Higley and Richard Gunther (eds.), Elites and Democratic


Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 38–80.
17 Omar G. Encarnación, The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and
Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003).
18 Sergio Bitar and Abraham F. Lowenthal (eds.), Democratic Transitions:
Conversations with World Leaders (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press, 2015).
19 As shown in the volume edited by Manuel Pérez Ledesma and Ismael Saz,
Del franquismo a la democracia, 1936–2013. Historia de las culturas políticas
en España y América Latina, vol. IV (Madrid/Zaragoza: Marcial Pons
Historia/Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2015).
20 “We, the sons and daughters of the victors and the vanquishes”, it says in
the ‘Appeal of 1st April’, in Santos Juliá, Nosotros, los abajo firmantes. Una
historia de España a través de manifiestos y protestas (1896–2013), (Barcelona:
Galaxia Gutemberg, 2014), p. 380.
21 Santos Juliá, Camarada Javier Pradera (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutemberg,
2012).
22 Felipe Nieto, La aventura comunista de Jorge Semprún. Exilio, clandestinidad
y ruptura (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2014). A recent recapitulation of the efforts
made during the Civil War itself to supersede the war and avoid a dictator-
ship by means of pacts and agreements that would lead to a transition to
democracy can be found in Santos Juliá, Transición. Historia de una política
española (1937–2017), (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutemberg, 2017).
23 There are many examples, but one of the first and best are the memoirs of
Laureano López Rodó, a close collaborator of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco
and the embodiment of the developmental sectors linked to Opus Dei. See
Laureano López Rodó, La larga marcha hacia la monarquía (Barcelona:
Noguer, 1977).
24 Federico Jiménez Losantos, La dictadura silenciosa: mecanismos totalitarios
en nuestra democracia (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 1993). This was a bestseller.
It contended that the socialism of Felipe González was destroying Spain and
its unity as a result of the agreements with the Basque and Catalan nation-
alists, as well as establishing mechanisms of social control that were
undermining democracy in Spain.
25 In his prologue written for the book edited by Juan C. García, La Falange
imposible. La palabra de la generación perdida (1950–1975), (Barcelona:
Ediciones Nueva República, 2007), José María Adán argues that it was the
Falangists who brought democracy to Spain and that this has been under-
mined because it has distanced itself from its initial values. From this
perspective, the Falangist reformists, together with the king, were respon-
sible for the triumph of democracy. For an academic perspective, see the
recent book by Álvaro de Diego, La transición sin secretos. Los franquistas
trajeron la democracia (Madrid: Actas, 2017), the subtitle of which explains
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16 MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER

the book’s thesis. A very small and contradictory part of the regime’s
political class – the Falangist reformists of the late Franco period – is equated
with the Francoists as a whole, despite the fact that they always opposed the
establishment of a Western-style liberal democracy in Spain.
26 This is the case of the leading revisionist of Francoism, Pio Moa, especially
in his books for the general public, such as Franco, Un balance histórico
(Barcelona: Planeta, 2005). The comparison with primie minister Antonio
Cánovas del Castillo is on page 190.
27 One of the most revealing accounts of this subject is that of Nicolás Sartorius
and Alberto Sabio Alcutén, El final de la dictadura. La conquista de la demo-
cracia en España, 1975–1977 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2008).
28 See, amongst others accounts, those of Elena Hernández Sandoica, Miguel
Ángel Ruiz Carnicer and Marc Baldó Lacomba, Estudiantes contra Franco
(1939–1975). Oposición política y movilización juvenil (Madrid: La Esfera de
los Libros, 2007), Javier Muñoz Soro, “La disidencia universitaria e intelec-
tual”, in Abdón Mateos (ed.), La España de los años cincuenta, (Madrid:
Eneida, 2008), p. 201 and ff., and Antonio López Pina (ed.), La generación
del 56 (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2010).
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2
The Sociologists and the Analysis
of Social (and Political) Change in
Spain between 1962 and 1982
MARIA LUZ MORÁN CALVO-SOTELO

The goal of this chapter is to evaluate the way in which the social sciences
in Spain, especially socio-political analysis, tried to make sense of the
social changes that took place in the period under study, 1962 to 1982. I
will focus on a number of interpretations regarding the nature of Spanish
society, its evolution and its principal problems. The visibility that the
work of the social scientists gradually acquired explains, in my view, the
importance of a clearly defined set of diagnoses that supported the idea
of a society – at the beginning of the period in question – in the throes of
modernisation, which, by the end of the period, was fully modernised
and comparable to its European neighbours. This interpretation even-
tually became hegemonic. Despite certain pecularities of Spain’s
modernisation being acknowledged and distinct visions of this process
being deployed, it was concluded that political change – what became
known as the ‘Spanish political transition’ – was not only desirable but
also practically inevitable.
The twenty years between 1962 and 1982 constitute an exceptional
period. In contrast to the extreme marginality of the social sciences in
Spain from the moment of their introduction, and in comparision with
the predominance of a strictly economic conception of society and
politics from the mid 1990s, socio-political analysis gained in academic
weight, as well as acquiring a notable visibility in the discourse of
politics and the media.1 As a result, during the last years of the Franco
regime, but above all during the Transition and the consolidation of
democracy – the end of which is normally taken as 1982 with the forma-
tion of the first Socialist government – a well-worked narrative emerged
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18 MARIA LUZ MORÁN CALVO-SOTELO

on the nature and development of Spanish society. In my opinion, this


played an important role in certain decisions, shifts and strategies of the
political parties, especially the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD)
(Union of the Democratic Centre) and the Partido Socialista Obrero
Español (PSOE) (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), and eventually
became a core part of the new democratic political culture. Even at the
risk of exaggerating, I would go so far as to state that this narrative
became something very similar to what Margaret Somers defines as an
“ideational regime”.2
In the last stage of this ‘Golden Age’, the experts and researchers in
political sociology became so involved in the main media outlets that
there was talk of a ‘mediatic sociology’.3 Some occupied important
positions in the political parties4 and in government.5 The presence of
the sociologists, all of them professors at public universities, was an
unprecedented development given their scarce presence within the
Francoist political elite. My goal is not to carry out an historical analysis
of sociology during these years in the strict sense, although I will
inevitably have to refer to its origins as well as to certain events that
shaped its development.6 Rather, I will try to introduce the principal
figures behind the dominant interpretation of Spanish modernisation
and political development. I will first focus on the institutions (university
faculties, schools, research centres, and so on) in which debates were
generated regarding the role of the social sciences in society. This
concerned a highly significant epistemological question that translated
into a tension between a pragmatic conception of sociology as a ‘tech-
nical’ discipline, which could be applied to the most pressing social
problems, as against the approaches that emphasised its ‘theoretical’
capacity to transform social reality. I shall also refer to a number of figures
who developed the work that resulted in these interpretations. In addi-
tion, I shall consider the reception of certain currents of thought, above
all structural functionalism, that provided the theoretical frameworks for
the characterisation of Spain as a modern country that marched
inevitably towards democratisation, as well as the channels by which
these debates, analyses and investigations became known. The last part
of the chapter will be dedicated to the essential features of the interpre-
tation of the Transition that has been hegemonic until the early 21st
century. Incidentally, I wish to acknowledge an important limitation to
my work. I have focused on one of the possible stories, that of the domi-
nant narrative on socio-political change in Spain, and I will try to show
the way in which this was constructed and how it shaped public opinion
and certain political actors. But there is also another story, not considered
here, which is arguably as interesting and relevant as the one which I am
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CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHIP.

he next morning was Sunday, and Peggy’s heart


sank when her aunt said to her, “I think I won’t let
you out of my sight to-day, Peggy, for something
always happens whenever you go even into the
garden alone.”
“It seems to,” Peggy admitted sadly, but she did
not like the idea of remaining all day long with Aunt
Euphemia.
Church was long and hot, and then there was
dinner, and then Aunt Euphemia said she would
read Peggy a story. Peggy did not care about this; she wanted to go
out, and yet did not dare to say so. But just as they were sitting down
to read, Dr. Seaton came in, and Peggy was delighted to have the
reading stopped.
“I’ve come to take Peggy with me to the harbour, if you will allow
it, Miss Roberts,” he said. “I promised to take her there some day,
and I have more time this afternoon than on week days.”
Aunt Euphemia was really rather pleased to get Peggy off her
hands for an hour. She was feeling sleepy, and it was a bother to her
to look after Peggy, so she consented to Dr. Seaton’s proposal
without any difficulty.
It was not a long walk to the harbour, where there was much to
see.
“I am going to take you on to a Danish ship,” Dr. Seaton said;
“you will hear the men talking a queer language you have never
heard before, and the captain will take you down into his cabin, I
dare say.”
The Danish ship was lying close up to the quay. It was painted
very bright emerald green, and Dr. Seaton pointed out to Peggy the
figure of a woman made of wood and painted white which was at the
bow of the ship.
“Poor lady, she goes through all the storms with her white dress.
When she comes into harbour after a winter storm she is crusted
over with salt from the waves,” he said.
“Why do they have a wooden lady at the end of the ship?” Peggy
asked.
“Because they think it brings luck to the ship,” said Dr. Seaton.
They came to the side of the quay, and he called to some of the
sailors, and they came running forward to lift Peggy on board.
Sailors are always specially
clean and tidy on Sunday,
dressed in their best clothes.
They were such nice-looking
men—tall, with yellow hair; and
Peggy noticed the rings in their
ears at once. Of course, she
couldn’t speak to them, or at
least they couldn’t understand
what she said; but the captain
took her hand, and led her all
round the ship, letting her look
at everything she wanted to see
—the huge anchor, all red with
rust, that took ever so many
men to lift; and what interested
Peggy more than anything—the cargo of tubs that the ship had
brought over. There were tubs of every imaginable size, down to tiny
ones of white wood.
“Oh, I could wash my doll’s clothes in these!” Peggy cried. She
wanted one dreadfully, and yet didn’t know how to get it, for the man
wouldn’t understand about her doll. As she was standing there
saying, “Doll, doll, doll,” and looking wistfully at the dear little tubs,
Dr. Seaton came round again from the cabin where he had been
seeing a boy with a broken arm.
“Oh, I do want a tub to wash my doll’s clothes in so dreadfully!”
Peggy cried, “and he doesn’t understand what I mean.”
Dr. Seaton said something in German, and in a minute the
captain began to pull out dozens of tubs for Peggy to choose from.
But she was not quite pleased till she had explained through Dr.
Seaton that she wanted to buy the tub. “I would never ask for
anything,” she explained—“mother doesn’t let me do that; and I’ve
got a whole shilling of my own to pay it with.”
Dr. Seaton had to explain this to the captain, and they both
laughed a great deal.
“But you must pay it for me just now please, Dr. Seaton, because
I haven’t my shilling with me,” Peggy explained; and then a horrid
fear overcame her that perhaps Dr. Seaton did not carry so much
money about with him either, and she would have to go away without
her tub; and he had told her that the ship would sail next morning!
She began to look very dismal at this thought, while Dr. Seaton
was feeling in his pocket; but to her great relief he drew out quite a
handful of shillings, and gave one to the captain, who took it and
laughed again.
“There now, Peggy; you can choose which you like best,” he said.
It took Peggy a very long time to
make up her mind. At last she chose a
beautiful little tub, oval shaped, bound
with three hoops of white wood, and
with two handles to lift it by. Dr. Seaton
wanted to hold it for her, but Peggy
wouldn’t let it out of her own hands,
she was so well pleased with it.
The captain told her that the tubs came from a place in Russia
with a funny name—Archangel; and that pleased Peggy even more,
because it was so much more interesting to have an Archangel tub
than an ordinary Scotch or English one.
Then the captain led the way down into his cabin. The cabin of a
ship like this is not like that of a large passenger steamer. It is almost
as small and dark as a cupboard, and has only just room for a tiny
table and two or three chairs. The table was securely fixed to the
floor, so that when the sea was rough with big waves it should not
slide about.
The captain brought out from a cupboard a funny-shaped bottle,
and the smallest glasses Peggy had ever seen. He poured a little
stuff out of the bottle into the glasses, and offered one to Dr. Seaton,
who took it and smiled; then the captain took one, and held it out,
and knocked the edge of the little glasses together, making a tinkling
sound like a bell.
“What does he do that for?” Peggy asked.
“It’s a way of being friendly and polite in Denmark,” Dr. Seaton
replied.
Then they both smiled and nodded again, and each drank off the
stuff from the glass.
“Let me taste, please,” said Peggy, standing on tip-toe by the
table.
“You would think it horrid,” said Dr. Seaton, laughing; “it would
burn your throat.”
“Oh, just a tiny taste—just the tip of my tongue; I want to so
much,” said Peggy.
So the captain poured another drop into the tiny glass, and
tinkled the edge against his own; and Peggy, thinking she must
imitate Dr. Seaton’s manners, bowed and smiled and tried to give the
same funny gulp down of the liquid as he had done. But there was
only a drop at the bottom of the glass, and that drop was such horrid
stuff, it was like trying to swallow mustard, Peggy thought. She
coughed, and coughed, and coughed till her eyes filled with tears,
and both the men stood laughing at her.
“That will cure you of drinking
habits, young woman,” said Dr.
Seaton, “Now we must say good-bye
and come home.”
Peggy was very sorry to leave the
ship, for there seemed to be all
manner of queer things to see there
still. But she said good-bye to the
captain very nicely—so nicely that he
told her to wait for a minute; and going
to the cupboard, he drew out from it a
huge scarlet shell, which he handed to
Peggy with a bow.
“O Peggy, that is a present you will like!” said Dr. Seaton.
Peggy could scarcely believe her own good luck. The shell was
so perfectly beautiful; and Dr. Seaton showed her also that if she
held it to her ear she would hear a rushing noise inside it.
“O captain, thank you very, very much,” said Peggy, quite
overcome with delight.—“I think you must carry the tub, Dr. Seaton,
for I can’t give my shell out of my hands,” she said.
Dr. Seaton translated her thanks to the captain, and he seemed
very pleased, and told Peggy he had a little girl on the other side of
the sea just her age. Peggy stood still looking very uncertain and sad
at this bit of news. Then she pulled at Dr. Seaton’s hand and
whispered something to him. She felt it was her duty to say so, but it
was so difficult that she could not say it out loud. It was this,—
“Won’t his little daughter want the shell?”
She waited very impatiently to hear what answer the captain
would make; but, to her great relief, he said that his daughter had
lots of shells, because he took them home to her from almost every
voyage. Then they all shook hands, and Peggy was lifted up on to
the quay again, clasping her large red shell.
“I shall always be able to hear the sea now, even when I go home
far away from it,” she said.
When they reached Seafield, Peggy ran into her room, and came
back with a little netted purse in her hand. Out of this she took her
shilling, and gave it to Dr. Seaton for the tub. But Dr. Seaton would
not take the shilling, and Peggy was quite distressed, and turned to
Aunt Euphemia to know what she ought to do. “Please, auntie, I
bought a tub, and now Dr. Seaton won’t take my shilling,” she said.
Aunt Euphemia, too, tried to make him take it, but all in vain.
So Peggy had to replace the shilling in her purse, and thank him
very much.
CHAPTER IX.
THE WASHING DAY.

onday morning was hopelessly wet. The rain came down in


sheets, and the garden looked like a pond. But Peggy was
delighted. “It’s such a good washing day,” she explained to
her aunt, “and all my doll’s things are so black.”
Aunt Euphemia suggested that Janet
would allow the washing to go on in the
kitchen; and Peggy at once ran away to fetch
the doll’s clothes and her little tub, and carry
them all to the kitchen. Janet was very
pleased. She put the tub on a stool, so that it
should be just the right height for Peggy to
wash at, and filled the tub with nice soapy hot
water.
Then she pinned up Peggy’s sleeves to
her shoulders, and together they undressed
the doll (which was a baby one, in long white
robes), and laid its clothes in a heap on a chair.
Peggy would have liked to wash them all at once, but Janet told
her that washerwomen did things one at a time, so she consented to
do this. The doll’s long, tucked white robe was the first to go into the
tub. It was not indeed very white, for it had got rather dirty on the
railway journey.
“Rub it all over with soap, Miss Peggy,” Janet said, and Peggy
rubbed on the soap as hard as she could. How the water fluffed up! it
almost filled the tub, and Peggy had to part the frothy suds away with
her hand to see to rub the cloth. After the robe had been well
washed, Janet gave Peggy a basin full of clean water to rinse the
soap out of it, and then she took a ball like a big blue cherry,
wrapped it in a bit of muslin, and shook it about in the water. The
water became bright blue too!
“Now, Miss Peggy, put the robe in,”
said Janet. Peggy was afraid to do it;
she thought it would come out bright
blue. But Janet assured her it would
only have a nice bluish look that would
make the white whiter; and Peggy
believed her, and dipped the robe in
the blue. It came out as white and nice
as possible.
Then Janet hung it before the
kitchen stove to dry, and Peggy saw
that on the stove Janet had put the
dearest little iron to heat.
“Am I to iron it out my own self,
Janet?” she asked.
“Oh yes, Miss Peggy, that you are.”
It took only a few minutes for the frock to dry, and then Janet put
a blanket with a sheet over it upon the lid of a large box, and gave
the box to Peggy for an ironing table.
The little iron was not at all difficult to manage, and Peggy found
that it was delightful to squeeze all the creases out of her doll’s robe.
It looked as good as new when it was done.
“Why, Janet, Belinda won’t ever need new robes at all; I can go
on washing and washing them,” Peggy said.
There remained, however, all Belinda’s under-clothes to be
washed; and before they were half finished, Peggy began to think
that washing was rather hard work.
“My hands feel so queer, Janet,” she said, drawing them out of
the soapy water. They looked indeed most strange; the skin was all
crinkled up in the funniest way. “Oh, look!” Peggy cried in dismay.
Janet assured her they would come right in a very short time.
“But I’m thinking you’ve washed enough, Miss Peggy, for one day;
maybe I’ll finish it for you,” she said.
Peggy wasn’t altogether sorry. “Well, Janet, if you will be so kind
as to finish for me, I will go and listen to my shell,” she said, “and
perhaps my hands will stop feeling funny.”
There was a small library at Seafield where Peggy was allowed
to play by herself. She liked the room much better than the drawing-
room, because there were such lots of books with nice pictures in
them. Those she liked best were Hume’s “History,” with pictures of
the kings and queens, and Blair’s “Grave,” with illustrations by a man
called William Blake. Peggy used to spread the large book upon the
floor and pore over the pictures. She didn’t understand them, but that
only made them more interesting. To-day, instead of looking at the
pictures, she got her red shell, and sat down on the corner of the
sofa holding the shell to her ear. The rushing sound in the shell was
just like the noise of the sea outside, and Peggy listened to it for a
long time. Then getting a little tired of this, she went to the window
and looked out. The rain had stopped, and the sun was beginning to
come out. The thrushes were singing as if they liked the rain, and
Peggy thought it would be nice to go out and see what it felt like
also. So she went out to the front door, and stood there looking out.
Then she stepped out on to the gravel; then she ran a little bit down
the avenue; then she came to the gate and looked out at the sea;
and then a new thought struck her—why should she not look to see
if she could find any lovely red shells on the beach? The tide was
out; there was a stretch of sand with little pools and rocks covered
with seaweed: surely in these pools or on the sands she might find a
red shell for herself! This was stupid of Peggy, for shells like that the
captain gave her come from tropic seas, not from our own sea; but
she did not know this.
Out Peggy skipped along the shining sand. It was firm and nice to
run on, and she wondered she had not done this long ago; it was far
nicer than the garden. Her feet made tracks on the sand like the
footprint Crusoe saw, she thought. Then she came to a pool with
little seaweedy rocks in it. The first thing she saw there made her
stand still with interest: it was a lot of things like little red flowers
growing on the edge of the rock. But when she put her hand down
and tried to get one, she found it was alive; and when she touched it,
it drew in all its waving red feelers, and became like a lump of red-
currant jelly fixed to the rock! “I hope I didn’t hurt it,” Peggy thought.
She leant over the pool and watched it till it cautiously put out first
one feeler and then another, and at last it looked as pretty as ever
again and as much alive. Peggy wondered what it was called. Then
down on the slushy sand at her feet Peggy saw a great big lump of
jelly, six times as large as the little one in the pool. It didn’t look very
nice, she thought, but she wondered if, when it was put into the
water, it would bloom out like the other. The only way to find this out
was to lift it into the pool, but Peggy hesitated about doing this. Then
she saw a long flat stone like a slate lying near, and taking this in her
hand, she tried to slip it under the “jelly beast,” as she called it. But
the jelly beast didn’t seem to like being disturbed, and it sank down
and down into the soft sand till it almost disappeared. Peggy became
more and more anxious to get it. She dug her slate down into the
sand, and at last, with a great effort, lifted the jelly beast, along with
a great lump of sand, and flung it into the pool. Then she sat down to
watch it. To her great joy it began, just like the other one, to put out
one feeler after another, till it lay there at the bottom of the pond like
a big pink rose. “Oh, it’s lovely; I do want to have it for my own!” she
cried. “I wonder if I would be allowed to have it in my tub.” She bent
down to look nearer, and under the fringe of seaweed suddenly she
saw something shining red. She plunged her hand down and
grabbed the prize. But, oh dear me! the next moment she screamed
and screamed. It was a large red crab she had caught at, and the
crab had caught her! Have you seen the crabs lying in the fish-shop
windows twitching their claws? They look harmless enough, but with
these claws they can hold on in the most terrible way, once they
catch hold of you. Oh, how Peggy screamed! She ran towards the
house splashing through the pools, with the big red crab hanging on
to her hand. She was in an agony of pain and terror. The sound of
her screams brought James running from the garden. Peggy ran
straight to him, calling out for help; and James caught up a stone,
and gave the crab such a blow on its claw that it let go in a moment,
and fell to the ground. Peggy’s finger was bleeding a good deal, and
he took out his own handkerchief and bound it up for her, and then
took her other hand and led her, still sobbing, up to the house.
“We’ll gang into Janet, missie,” he said
wisely. He knew that Janet was a more
comforting person than Martin, and Peggy
thought so too. Janet took her on her knee,
and kissed her and wiped her eyes, and
looked at the poor nipped finger till gradually
Peggy stopped crying. Then Janet took her to
the pump, and washed her face and hands, and began to tell her a
funny story about a crab that had nipped her own finger once, till
Peggy found herself laughing instead of crying.
When she was quite happy again, Janet said to Peggy that they
would go together and tell Aunt Euphemia all about it. Peggy was a
little frightened, but Janet said she must do it, and together they went
into the drawing-room.
Here it seemed to Peggy that Janet took all the blame on herself.
She told Aunt Euphemia how she had allowed Peggy to go away
from the kitchen, and had not looked after her, and how Peggy had
gone out alone, and then she told the sad story of the crab. And Aunt
Euphemia, instead of being angry, accepted the excuses Janet
made, for she was very fond of Janet, and never thought anything
she did was wrong.
“Maybe, ma’am, you would let me take Miss Peggy to the shore
myself?” Janet asked; “then she’d get no mischief.”
“Indeed, Janet, I see she must never be left alone for a minute;
so when your work is done, you may certainly take the child out with
you,” said Aunt Euphemia.
“Come away then, Miss Peggy,” said Janet; “ye’ll bide wi’ me till I
make the currant tart, and in the afternoon we can gang till the
shore.”
Peggy ran off to the kitchen as happy as possible to make the
currant tart, and Janet told her that they would go down to the shore
together, carrying Peggy’s tub, and fill it with all manner of sea
beasts, and bring them back to the house. And wasn’t this a
delightful suggestion?
CHAPTER X.
THE SEA BEASTS.

I
t was wonderful how many sea creatures Peggy and Janet found
when they began. The little tub was quite full before long, and
Peggy, looking into it, told Janet that she was afraid they wouldn’t
be very comfortable.
Janet considered for a minute, and then told Peggy that there
was an old washing-tub in the scullery which she was sure her aunt
would let her use instead of her own little one; then there would be
room enough for all the creatures to be happy.
“But how would we ever get a washing-tub filled with water out of
the sea?” Peggy asked.
“Hoots! James and me can
carry it up in pails,” said Janet.
“Will you ask Aunt
Euphemia about it?” Peggy
asked. She had begun to see
that Janet could get anything
she wanted. Janet said that she
would, and went off to gain Aunt
Euphemia’s consent to the
scheme. She came back
smiling, and Peggy knew all
was right, so she clapped her
hands with delight.
“O Janet, do you think James will get the water to-night?” she
cried. “For it would be horrid if my poor beasts died, or were sick for
want of it.”
Janet then went off to look for James, and before long Peggy had
the joy of seeing him come toiling up the walk, carrying two huge
pails of water. Then Janet went down to the sea again with two pails,
and brought them back filled, and James brought two more, and
when they had all been poured into the tub it was quite full.
“Now I can put in my beasts!” Peggy cried.
The first of all was a great prize: it was a bit of
stone with two sea anemones attached to it. Sea
anemones are the creatures that Peggy had
seen in the pool that were like little pink flowers.
Janet had explained to her that it hurt anemones
to be scraped off the rocks, and so they had to
hunt till they found them growing on a small
stone that it was possible to lift. It had been some time before they
found this, but at last, at the bottom of a pool, Janet spied a small
stone with two beautiful anemones sticking to it. Whenever she lifted
the stone out of the water, the funny little creatures drew in all their
pretty petal-like feelers, and became like lumps of red-currant jelly;
but the moment Peggy placed them in the tub of water, out came the
feelers one by one till they were as pretty as ever again.
Then there was one of the big ones that had been scooped out of
the sand with great difficulty, and was rather offended evidently, for it
took a long time to put out its feelers—just lay and sulked on the
bottom of the tub. Peggy watched it for a long time, but as it wouldn’t
put out its feelers, she turned to the other creatures.
There were a number of whelks. Whelks, you
know, are sea-snails. They live in shells, and
draw themselves in and out of them very quickly.
The moment Peggy put them into the tub, they
pushed their shells on to their backs as snails do,
and began crawling slowly along the edges of the
tub.
“O Janet, my whelks will walk out and get lost!” Peggy cried. But
Janet told her she thought they liked the water best, and would stay
in it.
Then there were three mussels. Mussels live in tight, dark blue
shells; but when they please they can open their shells, much as you
open a portfolio, for there is a kind of hinge at the
back of the shell. However, they too were sulky,
and lay still quite tight shut.
Janet had picked up a very large shell, and
put it into the tub, and Peggy asked her why. She
said they would see before long. Now she took the large shell and
laid it in the water. Peggy watched, and suddenly she saw a thin
green leg come stealing out; then another and another, till at last a
tiny green crab came scrambling altogether out of the shell, and ran
rapidly about the tub.
“O Janet, it’s a little crab! How did you know? Do they always live
in these big snail shells?” Peggy cried.
Janet told her that they were called hermit crabs, and that they
lived in the cast-off shells of other creatures, just using them as
houses.
“Put your hand into the water, Miss Peggy, and you will see him
run in,” Janet said.
Peggy shook her hand in the water, and saw the little crab scuttle
away and get into his shell like lightning.
Janet had wanted to add a big red crab, like the one that nipped
Peggy, but Peggy wouldn’t have it. There were some limpets, in their
little pyramid-shaped shells, and then Janet had added a lot of
seaweed of different kinds. Some of it was slimy green stuff, like long
green hair, which Peggy didn’t at all admire; but there were pretty
feathery pink weed and nice brown dulse.
“I wonder if James could get a flounder,” Janet said thoughtfully.
Peggy asked what a flounder was, and Janet said it was the kind
of flat little fish Peggy had had fried for breakfast that morning.
“They’re ill to catch,” she added. “But maybe James could get ye
ane.”
“Oh, a fish—a real live fish—in my tub would be so delicious!”
cried Peggy.
She ran off to beg James to try to
catch one for her; and James, who
was very obliging, went off once again
to the shore with a pail in search of a
flounder.
Peggy stood and watched him for
quite half an hour as he went slowly
across the sands, stooping over each
pool to see if there were flounders in it.
At last he came back, and Peggy
scarcely liked to ask him whether he
had got one, for she felt it would be so
disappointing if he hadn’t—her
collection would be quite incomplete.
But James was grinning with pleasure,
and he showed her two nice brown
flounders in the pail.
“Oh, they are flat!” cried Peggy.
She dived her hands into the pail, and attempted to catch them—
quite in vain. Then James slowly poured away all the water on to the
ground, and there the flounders lay, flopping about at the bottom of
the pail. Peggy was almost afraid to touch them, but James said they
would do her no harm; so she caught hold of one of the slippery,
wriggling little fish, and flung it into the tub, and it darted off and hid
itself under the seaweed. Then she put in the other flounder, and it
also hid under the seaweed, where it couldn’t be seen.
“I think they must be sleepy, and be going to bed,” Peggy said.
And then, quite tired out with her exertions, she rubbed her eyes and
yawned, till Janet told her it was time for her to go to bed like the
flounders; and Peggy agreed that it was.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST DAY AT SEAFIELD.

N
ow, if Peggy had taken time to think about it, she was only
going to make herself unhappy by collecting all these
delightful creatures in the tub; for her visit to Seafield was to
come to an end on Wednesday, and this was Monday
evening. The whole of Tuesday morning Peggy thought of nothing
but her dear sea beasts. She stood beside the tub and watched
them; she crumbled a bit of bread very fine, and flung it into the
water, and actually saw one of the flounders eat a crumb; she
chased the hermit crab into its shell a dozen times, and watched the
whelks move slowly along the side of the tub. It was the nicest
amusement she had ever had. But in the afternoon Aunt Euphemia
said that they were going to drive to the station.
“Your father is coming for you, Peggy, you know; he is going to
take you home to-morrow.”
Peggy was very fond of her father—so fond that she had cried
when she said good-bye to him last week. It surprised Aunt
Euphemia extremely that, instead of being glad to hear of his
coming, Peggy seemed sorry, for she burst into tears.
“Why, Peggy, are you not glad to see your father?” said Aunt
Euphemia.
“I don’t want to go home!” Peggy sobbed.
Aunt Euphemia was rather pleased. “Do you want to stay with me
then, dear?” she asked.
“No; it’s my sea beasts. Oh, oh, oh!” sobbed Peggy. “Do you think
father will take the tub of sea beasts back in the train with us?”
No wonder Aunt Euphemia was hurt. It was nasty of Peggy to say
that she only wanted to stay because of the sea beasts.
“Of course, he will do nothing of the kind,” said Aunt Euphemia.
“All the beasts must be put back into the sea to-night.”
She walked away and left Peggy to cry alone. But after she had
cried for some time, Peggy remembered that father was different
from Aunt Euphemia, and perhaps would not distress her by making
her part from the dear sea beasts. So she dried her eyes, and
thought perhaps it was as well that he was coming.
The drive to the station was quite dull. Nothing happened, for
Peggy wasn’t allowed to sit on the box-seat with the driver as she
wanted to, but had to sit beside her aunt in the carriage. At the
station, too, there was very little to notice—only some sheep in a
truck, looking very unhappy. Peggy gathered some blades of grass,
and held them to the sheep, and they nibbled them up. Then the
train came puffing in, and the next minute she saw her father jump
out of a carriage, and come along the platform to where she was.
Peggy was so delighted to see him that she ran right at him, and
caught hold of his knees so that she nearly made him fall. Then she
took his hand, and began telling him everything at once, in such a
hurry that it was impossible for him to understand anything she said.
“Not so fast, Peggy. Wait till we are in the carriage,” he said,
laughing.
It seemed a very long time till they were all packed in, and then
Peggy had to climb on to her father’s knee and put her arm round his
neck. “Now may I begin?” she asked.
“Yes, sweetest; tell me all about everything now,” her father said.
And Peggy began her story, of course, at the wrong end.
“I’ve got a tub full of such dear sea beasts, father,” she said.
“There are two flounders, and a lot of whelks, and a hermit crab, and
two anemones fixed on a stone, and a big one stuck on to the foot of
the tub, and I watch them all day; and, please, how am I to take them
home?”
“Well, I must come and see them first,” her father said.
“And please, father, I got lost one day, and had my frock stolen—
the new one—and the bees stung me, and a crab nipped my finger,
and I was very naughty once—only once—and I went on to a green
ship, and—and—”
“Why, Peggy, you seem to have had a week of the most
extraordinary adventures; it will be quite dull to come home.”
Peggy wasn’t quite sure about this. She had so many things she
was fond of at home, that if only she might take her sea beasts back
with her, she thought she would be quite happy to return. She sat still
for a few minutes thinking about this, while Aunt Euphemia spoke to
her father. But the moment the carriage stopped at the door, she
seized her father’s hand, and begged him to come and see her tub
of sea beasts.
“Not till after tea, Peggy; I’ll come then,” he said.
Peggy would have liked him to come there and then, but she
knew she must wait.
Tea seemed longer than usual. Her father told her to be quiet, so
she ate away without uttering a word, and listened to all the dull
things Aunt Euphemia was saying. At last, when tea was over, she
came round to where her father sat, and took hold of his hand, and
gave it a little squeeze, which she knew he would understand.
“Yes, dearest!” he said,
but waited to hear the end of
what Aunt Euphemia was
saying. “Now, Peggy,” he
said at last, “come along;”
and together they went out
to the garden, and came to
the tub. Peggy looked in.
“Why, father,” she cried,
“my crab is floating on his
back! Isn’t it funny of him?”
Colonel Roberts examined the crab for a minute.
“I’m afraid he’s dead, Peggy,” he said. “They don’t turn up their
toes that way unless they’re dead.”

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