La Transizione spagnola: le origini di un processo di lungo periodo

Abstract

The Spanish Transition: the origin of a process with a long duration

This review analyses the main books on the Spanish Transition to democracy published from the mid Eighties up to nowadays. It underlines the different approach between Spanish and foreign historiography and it focuses its attention on the books which describe the second Francoism as the moment when the long run factors that allowed the success of the Transition to democracy started to raise. Later it analyses some books dedicated to the role played by the main individual and collective characters (King Juan Carlos I and political parties), to show afterwords the opposite interpretations on the role played by the memory of the Civil war on the Transition to democracy. Finally it tries to establish a relationship between the role played by the memory of the Civil war and the crumbling of the myth of Transition and how the debate on this issue — raised at historiographical level — influenced the political and social sphere.