November 20 marked fifty years since the death of Francisco Franco, the sinister dictator who ruled Spain autocratically since his triumph, in April 1939, in the iniquitous civil war that he himself unleashed against the Second Republic, the experiment in constitutional democracy undertaken in 1931 and drowned in blood by the military caste, politicians aligned with fascism and the Catholic Church, allies against what they considered anti-Spain for try to create a more free and egalitarian society, with rights for women and workers. The anniversary has led to an avalanche of memories, debates and disquisitions not so much about the dictatorship itself – a rogue stage of the 20th century, one of the two regimes, along with the Portuguese, with a fascist matrix that survived several decades after the defeat of Mussolini and Hitler – but about what came after: the Spanish transition to democracy, converted into a paradigm for its breadth and good results.
The history of Spain has been one of my intellectual passions, so I gladly accepted invitations to two forums on the topic: one organized by my Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid, together with the Institute of Social Research at UNAM, where I met with Yolanda Meyenberg and Esther del Campo; and another by the José Ortega y Gasset University Institute, on the exact date of the gloomy commemoration, in conversation with Otto Granados, Ricardo Becerra and Raymundo Rivapalacio.
At both tables the comparison between the Spanish and Mexican transitions hovered, largely because, in a broad sense, our democratization began in 1977, under the influence of what was happening in Spain. But they were very different processes: the Spanish one was a great pact of elites, driven by strong social pressures, and it soon led to something more than a simple change of regime: it was a complete change of social order; The Mexican one, on the other hand, was an incremental process of a quarter of a century, which ended up being truncated.
The Spanish change far exceeded the electoral opening. It meant the transition from a natural State, based on the discretionary monopoly of violence and the distribution of income among the elites of the ruling coalition, to a social order of open access, supported by a shared legal framework and a real expansion of rights to historically excluded sectors. This leap was possible thanks to a great democratic pact that involved agreements and mutual concessions between actors with abysmal ideological differences—from communism to the most conservative sectors of twilight Francoism—and that triggered an economic, institutional and social transformation of enormous significance.
The transition took concrete political form with the Political Reform Law of 1976, a piece of legislation that dissolved the organic structures of Franco’s regime and opened the door to the legalization of parties, unions and social organizations. This recognition was decisive: it placed the real actors of the political conflict within the institutional framework, instead of continuing to manage their exclusion. Legality stopped being a privilege and became a space for competition.
The next milestone was the Moncloa Pacts, celebrated in 1977. They were not a technocratic agreement, but an exercise of historical responsibility. Political forces, social organizations and emerging unions accepted a program of economic stabilization and, at the same time, a commitment to expand rights, create protection mechanisms and lay the foundations for a new social order. The State recognized the social partners as part of the institutional design and abandoned the creation of the vertical union, the centerpiece of Franco’s regime.
That spirit was carried over to the preparation of the 1978 Constitution, whose project was drafted by a plural presentation made up of seven members of Congress, coming from diverse forces: UCD, PSOE, Popular Alliance, PCE, Catalan Minority and Socialist Party of Catalonia. Each one brought different doctrinal traditions to the table and, despite their differences, they wove a text capable of integrating conflicting projects. The Constitution was not a simple legal formula: it represented a profound agreement on the form of the State, fundamental rights, the separation of powers and territorial distribution. It was approved by a very broad parliamentary consensus and then endorsed by the citizens.
This territorial pact crystallized in the State of Autonomies, which recognized the historical and linguistic diversity of the country, and designed a system of powers that allowed the political integration of nationalisms and regionalisms that, without that recognition, would have remained in open confrontation with the State. The unity was no longer based on centralist imposition and acquired the most civilized form of institutional cooperation.
The transition also redesigned the links between the State and the economy. Entry into the European Economic Community in 1986 forced productive modernization, commercial opening and the consolidation of administrative professionalization. This shift modified the incentives of the system and reduced the margin for patrimonialism. Spain gained access to structural funds, markets and regulatory standards that reinforced the new legal order.
Another turning point occurred after the failed coup of February 23, 1981. The military attempt accelerated the need to reorganize the armed forces. The first socialist government undertook a profound reform: it redefined the command structure, professionalized bodies, reduced the political influence of Franco’s officers and guaranteed military subordination to democratic power. It was not an administrative procedure, but an institutional surgery that eliminated the systemic threat that hung over the young democracy.
This process led to the development of the welfare state, another pillar of the new order. Health universalization, educational expansion, housing policies, social protection and creation of modern public services: the transition was not limited to putting ballot boxes, it built citizenship. This public investment sustained social cohesion in times of economic adjustment and consolidated democratic legitimacy.
The contrast with Mexico allows us to illustrate the limits of our own transition. Spain managed to dismantle its old authoritarian order and reconfigure its institutional arrangement towards an open access model, based on impersonal rules, free competition and guaranteed rights. In contrast, Mexico democratized its electoral system without thoroughly transforming its power structures. Clientism, corporatism, patronage, barriers to social and political participation, as well as monopolistic privileges, continued to be central components of the institutional order. Partisan plurality did not eliminate the incentives of a system built to distribute income among protected elites. Ours was an incomplete transition: it allowed alternation, but did not alter the foundations of a State with restricted access. That is the key to its failure.