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PDF From Franco To Freedom The Roots of The Transition To Democracy in Spain 1962 1982 Miguel Angel Ruiz Carnicer Ebook Full Chapter
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FROM FRANCO
TO FREEDOM
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ii LEFTTT
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.
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Rightt vii
Contents
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
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page 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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x LEFTTT
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1
Introduction:
From Franco to Freedom
MIGUEL ÁNGEL RUIZ CARNICER
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
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page 4
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.
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page 6
Introduction 7
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
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page 9
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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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,
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page 11
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
ruiz carciner - xx - index - r1 27/09/2018 15:39 Page 12
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
Introduction 15
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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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.”