Catalonia during the Transition to Democracy and Self-government

Abstract

Catalonia and its demands attracted considerable attention on the Spanish political scene after the death of Franco, much as they had in the early 1930s, during the last years of the reign of Alfonso XIII and the first years of the Second Republic. All Spanish political forces, both those who supported a gradual transition to democracy and those in favour of an outright break with the past, had to define their position on the ‘Catalan problem’. Catalonia, where society had taken a clear stance to the Franco régime and where the opposition had been united within a single organization with great powers of mobilization, could not simply be ignored.