Spain's transition to democracy

Francisco Franco, who had ruled Spain as dictator since winning the Civil War in 1939, died on November 20, 1975. Two days later, Juan Carlos de Borbon, whom Franco had named his successor, was proclaimed king. Few expected him to dismantle the regime, but within three years Spain had legalized political parties, held free elections on June 15, 1977, and approved a democratic constitution by referendum in December 1978. The change came without a civil war or a revolution.¹³⁴

The Civil War had left Spain with a deep fear of renewed violence, and Franco's regime had survived by repression, censorship and the memory of that conflict. By the 1970s, though, the country was changing. A boom of tourism and industry in the 1960s created a modern middle class, workers organized in illegal unions, and the Catholic Church had distanced itself from the regime. Many in the elite saw that Spain's hopes of joining Western Europe depended on democracy.⁴

The key move was made by Adolfo Suarez, whom the king appointed prime minister in 1976. Suarez was a Franco-era official, but he persuaded the Francoist parliament to vote itself out of existence through the Law for Political Reform, and he legalized the Communist Party in April 1977. Opposition leaders, in return, accepted the monarchy and a deal known as the pact of forgetting, in which they chose not to prosecute Franco-era crimes. The transition faced a real threat on February 23, 1981, when Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero led civil guards into the parliament in a coup attempt. Juan Carlos went on television, ordered the army to uphold the constitution, and the coup collapsed.²³⁵