Cultural Diversity and the Development of a Pre-democratic Civil Society in Spain

  • Elisa Chuliá
Chapter

Abstract

The Spanish democratic transition has been predominantly interpreted as an arrangement between the reformist elites of the Francoist regime and the opposition elites, both ready to agree on the establishment (according to the former) or re-establishment (according to the latter) of democracy in an ordered way, drawing on the lessons learnt from the traumatic experience of the Civil War (1936–39).1 Probably this interpretation, in which the prominent role in the transition has been generally attributed to the national elites and their strategic decisions, explains why the society at that time, or more specifically, the way in which people treated and related to each other, their ideas on politics, their values or normative preferences when organizing their lives, setting up their families, receiving information on public issues or enjoying leisure time have attracted only limited attention among historians.

Keywords

Civil Society Cultural Diversity Cultural Product Spanish Society Soap Opera 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    For the large majority of the opposition to Franco’s regime, the Second Republic (1931–36) was a valuable democratic precedent. On the learning process furthered by the collective memory of the Civil War see P. Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia. The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002).Google Scholar
  2. One of the best-known examples of the interpretation of the Spanish Transition in terms of the elites’ strategic behaviour is J.M. Maravall and J. Santamaría, ‘Political Change in Spain and the Prospects for Democracy’, in G. O’Donnell, P. Schmitter and L. Whitehead, eds, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Southern Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
  3. 2.
    V. Pérez-Díaz, The Return of Civil Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), differentiates between ‘civil society’ in the strict sense and ‘civil society’ in the broad sense of the word. Only the former can emerge in the context of a dictatorship, while the latter requires the existence of a democracy respecting individual freedoms and the rule of law.Google Scholar
  4. 3.
    It seems to me that the differences between the ‘anti-Francoist opposition cultures’ have often not been sufficiently underlined. J. Muñoz Soro, Cuadernos para el Diálogo (1963–1976). Una historia cultural del segundo franquismo (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2006), gives a compelling hint of this internal diversity when he analyses the various ideological streams which coexisted within the influential magazine Cuadernos para el Diálogo.Google Scholar
  5. 4.
    For example, one ex-minister of the Franco regime wrote ’…neglected by the principal centres of public and private cultural power, we lost the battle of thought’. G. Fernández de la Mora, Río Arriba. Memorias (Barcelona: Planeta, 1995), p. 120. According to a high-ranking military officer, ‘the public mass media did not manage to direct opinion. As for the rest, the opposition wrote with names and surnames, while elements sympathetic to the regime were hidden behind pseudonyms’. J.I. San Martín, Servicio Especial. A las órdenes de Carrero Blanco (De Castellana a El Aaiún) (Barcelona: Planeta, 1983), p. 67.Google Scholar
  6. 5.
    J. Pradera, ‘Jeringas, agendas y silencios’, Claves de Razón Práctica, 32 (1993), pp. 48–55.Google Scholar
  7. 6.
    Giuliana di Febo gives a recent example of this line of argument: ’… industrial growth and the changes arising from this in the economic and administrative spheres, the increase in tourism, the greater enjoyment of consumer goods, growing cultural exchanges and contacts with Europe, encouraged new social norms, both work and behavioural’. In G. di Febo and S. Julia, El Franquismo (Barcelona: Paidós, 2005), p. 109. More than 1,300,000 Spaniards, about one-tenth of the Spanish active population, migrated between 1960 and 1970 to Europe, especially to France and Germany. SeeGoogle Scholar
  8. J.P. Fusi and J. Palafox, España: 1808–1996. El desafío de la modernidad (Madrid: Espasa, 1997), p. 355.Google Scholar
  9. 7.
    J. Gracia, La resistencia silenciosa. Fascismo y cultura en España (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2004), p. 25.Google Scholar
  10. 9.
    J.P. Fusi, Un siglo de España. La cultura (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 1999), p. 125.Google Scholar
  11. 10.
    C.P. Boyd, Historia Patria. Política, historia e identidad nacional en España: 1875–1975 (Barcelona: Pomares-Corredor, 1997), p. 223.Google Scholar
  12. 12.
    S. Juliá, Historia de las dos Españas (Madrid: Taurus, 2004), pp. 409–62.Google Scholar
  13. 16.
    J.P. Fusi, ‘Para escribir la biografía de Franco’, Claves de Razón Práctica 27 (1992), p. 14.Google Scholar
  14. 17.
    P. Muñoz has for instance convincingly shown that the view of women defended by the Francoist regime was prevalent from the 19th century and only partially changed during the brief period of the Second Republic: ‘The ideas of women as different beings, weak and needing protection, which found an excellent source of authority in religion and later on in science was not exclusive to the most conservative and ultramontane politicians; it was the general sentiment of nineteenth-century bourgeois society’. See P. Muñoz López, Sangre, amor e interés. La familia en la España de la Restauración (Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2001), pp. 208–9.Google Scholar
  15. 20.
    About the propagandistic use of these and other dates of celebration see R.R. Tranche and V. Sánchez-Biosca, NO-DO. El tiempo y la memoria (Madrid: Cátedra/Filmoteca Española, 2000), pp. 202–18.Google Scholar
  16. 21.
    A. Cazorla Sánchez, Las políticas de la victoria. La consolidación del Nuevo Estado franquista (1938–1953) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2000), p. 224.Google Scholar
  17. 24.
    Quoted in J. Ginzo and L. Rodriguez Olivares, Mis días de radio. La España de los 50 a través de las ondas (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2004), p. 252.Google Scholar

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© Elisa Chuliá 2007

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  • Elisa Chuliá

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