Spanish transition to democracy
With no consensus over its periodisation, Spain’s so-called transition to democracy coincided with the death of Franco (20 November 1975), which signalled if not its beginnings then certainly its milestone. The Transition was a process called in to establish a democratic regime in Spain, a collective, asymmetrical negotiation in which citizen mobilisations managed to secure a series of social and political transformations, notwithstanding the reformist policies of successive governments. Recent research has pointed to a tumultuous period bound by the protection of those who had belonged to the Franco regime and by ongoing repression, censorship and other forms of violence from different sectors, causing hundreds of deaths.
The transition to democracy in Spain witnessed different agents from the political sphere who had furtively remained active or in exile during the dictatorship moving into official circles, along with remnants of the regime, and staying in power in the years that came after, this time in the form of political parties such as the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD), Alianza Popular (AP) and Fuerza Nueva (FN). However, mass mobilisation movements protesting about regional administrations, calling for the legalisation of abortion, trade union organisations, rights for homosexuals, demanding the abolishment of the Danger to Society Law and the Vagrants and Miscreants Law, and demonstrating about numerous other issues, took root in this period and embedded the most significant landmarks in the Transition period.
After the death of Francisco Franco, and as Juan Carlos I — the successor named by Franco in 1969 — was king, Carlos Arias Navarro was appointed president of the Spanish government, an enduring figure from the Franco regime whose time in office was marked by the murder of five workers, among others, in Vitoria en 1976, and the order for the execution of the last people sentenced to death by Franco. Carlos Arias Navarro’s forced resignation brought in the elected Adolfo Suárez, who hailed from Falangist circles, and Suárez’s government implemented reforms to adapt the legislation to a new form of state — for instance, the Law for Political Reform (1976–1977), which allowed parties such as the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) to be legalised; moreover, the Moncloa Pacts were signed and the Divorce Law was promulgated in 1981. Yet the burgeoning Transition in the political sphere also ensured impunity and a blind-eye turned to crimes committed during the Civil War and by Francoism, particularly via the Amnesty Law in 1977, which did not solely refer to political prisoners from the dictatorship but also the crimes committed by the regime. In 1978, during Suárez’s first term, the Constitution was voted by referendum, establishing the parliamentary monarchy as a form of State.
With regard to cultural policies, the Ministry of Culture was created in 1977, replacing the Ministry of Information and Tourism. Javier Tusell, the general director of Fine Arts from 1979 to 1981, took charge of managing the exhibition Pintura española del siglo XX (Spanish Painting from the 20th Century), which was held in Mexico in 1978, and was also responsible for the transfer of Guernica to Madrid, widely considered the greatest cultural watershed from the period. Both the painting’s “return” to Spain and the Mexican exhibition were held aloft as a symbol of national reconciliation and the reinstatement of democracy, and became a key gesture in the cultural policy of the Transition. Adolfo Suárez’s involvement in the negotiations with the artist’s heirs demonstrated its status as true matter of the state, yet the process also spotlighted some of the contradictions in the Transition, most discernibly the armoured cabinet protecting the work, and the presence of the Guardia Civil (Spain’s Military Police) in the Ball Room of the Casón del Buen Retiro, shedding light on the political tension that still perforated the country, particularly after the recent attempted coup d’état, on 23 February 1981, and the attacks by the far Right and Left that were carried out at the dawn of the Transition. As a result, Javier Tusell declared that Guernica’s presence in Spain marked the “end of the Transition”.
