The Transition to Democracy and the Basque Problem

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, the processes of transformation, which brought to an end dictatorial regimes and initiated the construction and consolidation of democracy, have become one of the favourite subjects for research among social scientists. Interest in this problem has increased even more since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the wave of popular mobilization against communism. In the context of this debate, the Spanish example is generally considered a paradigmatic model for the successful and peaceful establishment of a democratic state after a relatively brief period of transition. The process started with the death of the dictator on 20 November 1975, or even some months earlier when the news concerning Franco’s grave illness was known, and it ended with a large consensus backing the new Constitution, as manifested by the Spanish population in the referendum held in December 1978. Thus, in a little more than three years, Spain managed to overcome nearly forty years of dictatorship by carrying out an ‘ideal type of a negotiated transition’, which set the conditions for the following ‘successful and relatively unproblematic consolidation of democracy’.¹ In comparison with other successful southern European transitions to democracy (Portugal, Greece), Spain has been ranked highest, ‘since it has been able to resolve problems which were slightly more difficult faster and more efficiently’.²