‘Democracy builders’: Conflictivity and democratic learning in the educational and cultural spheres during the late-Francoist and Transition periods

Abstract

The early 1960s in Spain saw the beginnings of a cycle of protest against the dictatorship of Francisco Franco that would end by rendering its continuity unviable after the dictator’s death in 1975. The process of building democracy was undertaken bidirectionally, both from ‘above’ and from ‘below’, and it involved multiple actors. This article pays special attention to those ‘democratizing agents’ in civil society who acted in the cultural and educational spheres, as teachers, students, protest singers or members of the cultural centres and neighbourhood associations that emerged at that time, especially in rural Andalusia. It argues that through day-to-day micro-conflicts and micro-mobilizations, those actors acquired and transmitted civic–democratic guidelines and values.