The Cycle of Citizen Mobilization in the Spanish Transition

Abstract

One of the most important trends in recent discussions of the Spanish political transition of the 1970s has been the growing emphasis on popular participation and its contribution to the process. Thus, what has occurred in recent years is the effort to bring all of this popular participation to the fore in challenging the dominant framework of a democratic transition made primarily by consensus “from above”. This article offers a framework for highlighting and explaining the emergence, impact and decline of popular participation in the Transition. In the academic language of social movement theory, it will analyze the political opportunity structure that created a space for citizen mobilization under the dictatorship, the resources they mobilized, the coalescence of a cycle of mobilization, the factors that led to the demobilization of the citizen movement, and finally, the long-term impact of this participation on Spain’s democracy.