From Republic to Europe: the search for democracy in the "plumb years" of the exterior opposition to Francoism (1946-1957)

Abstract

Europa’s idea represented the necessary point of convergence of interests between liberal oposición democrática and the moderate groups of the pro-Franco dictatorship. It begins after the frustrated intentions of the arrival of the III Republic in the years later to the Second World war, and continues in the fifties with movements in the exterior but also in the interior. This activity is translated in the oposición democrática in a gradual substitution of the idea of "Republic" by that of "Europe". It was an ideological fundamental turn to understand what happens in the sixties. This process was under the ferreous control of the pro-Franco device, and the pro-European groups of the interior played a basic role canalizing to the opposition. The meeting of Munich meant a few years later the logical consequence of this process.