Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain: The Transition to Democracy after Franco

by Laura Desfor Edles

• ISBN13: 9780521621403
• ISBN10: 0521621402
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-05-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a book about the role of culture in social change and the Spanish transition to democracy after Franco. Laura Desfor Edles takes a distinctively culturalist approach to the 'strategy of consensus' deployed by the Spanish elite and uses systematic textual interpretation (with a particular focus on Spanish newspapers) to show how a new symbolic framework emerged in post-Franco Spain which enabled the resolution of specific events critical to the success of the transition. In addition to uncovering underlying processes of symbolization, she shows that politico-historical transitions can themselves be understood as ritual processes, involving as they do phases and symbols of separation, liminality and re-aggregation.

Table of Contents

List of tables	page viii	(1)
List of figures	ix	(1)
List of abbreviations	x	(2)
Acknowledgements	xii	(2)
Map of Spain	xiv
Part I: Interpreting the Spanish transition to democracy	3	(38)
1 Introduction	3	(8)
2 Theories of transition and transitions in theory	11	(15)
3 Spain: a history of divisions and democracy	26	(15)
Part II: The symbolic basis of Spanish consensus	41	(60)
4 The spirit of consensus: the core representations of the Spanish transition	41	(22)
5 The curtain rises: the first democratic elections	63	(18)
6 The 1977 Moncloa Pacts and the ritualization of communality	81	(20)
Part III: Conflict and consensus in the institutionalization of Spanish democracy	101	(50)
7 Democratic reaggregation and the 1978 Constitution	101	(21)
8 The Basque exception: questions of communality and democracy	122	(17)
9 Conclusion and epilogue	139	(12)
Notes	151	(29)
References	180	(13)
Index	193