Militancy in Transition’s political culture

The case of UCD

Abstract

This paper suggests revising the process followed on the Spanish Transition to build a democratic citizenship and new participative habits since the organization of a political party. Some values of that kind of citizenship were achieved, but it was obtained a democracy that doesn’t give priority to the most active and participative way and so it may affect the hegemonic version of the Transition. This proposal will focus in an important part of the civil society that it will act with different intensity on the building of a political project that finally becomes a political party. A party, the Unión de Centro Democrático, which changed from a vague chance into a firm reality and key element during the first stage of the Transition. It supposed the building of an elitist political culture model, a kind of less participative citizenship, fundamental to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a model of democracy controlled by a bureaucratic and hierarchical party that suggested the reformist moderation as a channel to modernization.