Barcelona Metropolis

Social polarisation and growing individualism are creating opportunities for reactionary forces that undermine democracy and seek to dismantle the advances achieved through decades of civil society’s efforts. Social, labour, student and neighbourhood movements were crucial in delegitimising the Franco regime and in enabling a Transition that represented a clear break with continuity. Today, that legacy of protest, feminism and the defence of the rights of all groups is under threat.

When the Caudillo gave his final speech in Madrid’s Plaza de Oriente on 1 October 1975, the Franco dictatorship was as fragile as its leader. Although the state’s coercive power remained intact, by its final years the regime’s lack of legitimacy was evident to much of society. From the early 1970s the dictatorship’s crisis deepened steadily, and in that process the democratic demands and alternatives that emerged from civil society proved decisive.

How was this change possible? The Franco regime had been built on the violence unleashed during the Spanish Civil War, followed by the introduction of an entire series of legal and political instruments designed to ensure social control – something it managed to sustain for more than two decades. However, the changes of the 1960s and the gradual reorganisation of civil society largely explain this evolution.

From the early 1960s, Spain experienced remarkable social dynamism, driven by rapid socio-economic and cultural changes, fostered by the international context. In a short time, economic improvement was presented by the political authorities as a key element of their legitimacy in practice – one that complemented, rather than replaced, the legitimacy of origin claimed through “victory” over Anti-Spain. The 1960s were undoubtedly the high point of Francoism. Yet while the dictatorship succeeded in broadening internal consensus among part of the population, at the same time those very socio-economic changes fuelled social conflict, channelled through a range of movements.

The first and most fundamental force was the labour movement. In those years, driven by large-scale migration from rural to industrial areas, a large new working class was emerging, which soon showed a strong willingness to engage in labour disputes when it became clear that, without mobilisation, workers could not secure the improvements they considered essential, particularly in terms of wages. Alongside the rejuvenation of the working class, clandestine activism also grew, transforming this willingness to mobilise into organised strength.

Rebuilding the labour movement required activists to develop numerous skills to adapt to the harsh conditions imposed by Francoism. In practice, the new labour movement – almost synonymous at the time with Comisiones Obreras [Workers’ Commissions] – was able to consolidate because it successfully combined clandestine struggle with open action within a legal framework deliberately designed against its interests, in which the official Organización Sindical Española [Spanish Trade Union Organisation] played a central role.

Today, in an era marked by individualism that questions the need for collective action, it is important to emphasise that it was the commitment and initiative of thousands of people that gave the movements a combination of social and political goals, infrastructures and coordination networks. This enabled various social groups, particularly workers, to achieve material improvements and a degree of prominence that, over time, political power could not prevent. In particular, the labour movement served as the shock force – the most organised component of the anti-Franco opposition.

Student and neighbourhood mobilisation

By the mid-1960s, as in the labour sphere, universities had moved beyond resistance strategies to adopt active opposition strategies. Across all movements, the success of anti-Franco activism depended on connecting with the expectations of potential participants and conveying that another kind of society was possible. This was especially important for the student movement, where sociability and socialisation were deeply intertwined, and where the link between personal and political spheres had a highly positive effect on socio-political mobilisation.

Moreover, the student movement played a fundamental role in shaping the socialisation and political culture of wide professional sectors that would also prove crucial in challenging the dictatorship. In this regard, the student movement can be seen as a “teacher” of protest practices, particularly valuable for organisations with little apparent political profile. In some cases, these associations became platforms for political-cultural dissent. The most active opposition sectors were predominantly young people who shared the values of freedom and autonomy characteristic of the international context of 1965-1975. For most participants, involvement in social movements was experienced as a unique democratic exercise. Indeed, the very practice of politics became a generator of democratic culture. Likewise, culture itself became a politically charged tool for the future; in this respect, anti-Franco activism was able to challenge the regime’s hegemony among the most active sectors of society, though not with the same intensity everywhere.

Similarly, particularly in the 1970s, the neighbourhood movement became an original phenomenon, mobilising highly diverse groups. Within the framework of neighbourhood activism, there was political and protest-oriented interaction between sectors normally separated, such as professionals, service workers and housewives. It is worth noting that the neighbourhood movement also created spaces for sociability and socialisation for young people, organising festivals and cultural activities, especially in areas far from city centres.

Although this movement was born with the aim of organising local residents to address the immense needs of the neighbourhoods, the scale it ultimately reached cannot be explained without the mobilisation climate characteristic of the 1970s. In this context, as in others, anti-Franco activism promoted the expansion of spaces of freedom and self-organisation where direct democracy could be exercised. It should also be emphasised that the emergence of this “counter-hegemonic” society did not follow the liberal model of representation but reflected the process of democratic radicalisation experienced by European societies between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. In Spain, social movements managed to expand the space for political action, thereby broadening the limits of legality.

The intensity of mobilisation and the ability of social movements to organise themselves became evident in 1976, when the first government of the monarchy launched a reform project with a strong element of continuity with Francoism. Within this context, opposition became uncontrollable for the executive, and in the first half of the year Spain became the scene of extraordinary social mobilisation, driven by the opposition to the dictatorship and provoked by the government’s repressive policies. Thus, the first “reformist” attempt failed spectacularly, largely thanks to the mobilisation that was unleashed in response to its inconsistency.