A Culturalist Approach to Ethnic Nationalist Movements: Symbolization and Basque and Catalan Nationalism in Spain

Abstract

The Spanish transition to democracy after the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975 is heralded as the “very model” of successful transition from authoritarianism to democracy (Gunther 1992), the epitome of “transition through transaction” (Share 1986, 1987). Spain is proclaimed “the country to be studied” (Przeworski 1986: 61) for good cause. Despite a long history of political turmoil, a notoriously brutal civil war, and nearly 40 years of dictatorship, Spain transformed itself into a democracy “from the inside out” using a remarkably quiescent process of reform called, significantly, the “strategy of consensus” (Carr and Fusi 1979; Payne 1985).