1 00:00:01,060 --> 00:00:03,420 Morning. Thanks very much for that kind introduction. 2 00:00:03,420 --> 00:00:11,700 And let me first of all thank the organisers for having invited me and let me congratulations for having convened this extremely interesting seminar. 3 00:00:12,060 --> 00:00:16,080 When I first received the invitation, of course, I it was something I just had to accept. 4 00:00:16,980 --> 00:00:22,260 How often do you receive an invitation from an organisation whose acronym spells the word pomp? 5 00:00:23,590 --> 00:00:27,450 Well, that's certainly foolish courage, I think accounts for that. 6 00:00:27,900 --> 00:00:35,400 I also accepted out of nostalgia my first set foot in these grounds in March of 1981. 7 00:00:36,180 --> 00:00:43,050 And of course, everything brings me back to that transition time and time again, because although I was I was an undergraduate then, 8 00:00:43,500 --> 00:00:49,980 the reason for my first visit was that Philippe Gonzalez had been invited to speak here by Sir Raymond Carver. 9 00:00:50,850 --> 00:00:59,729 And this was only a few weeks after that terrible episode, the failed coup, that some of you will recall on the 23rd of February 1991. 10 00:00:59,730 --> 00:01:05,850 And I have never forgotten how pale and worried if anything of that is still not three weeks after the event. 11 00:01:09,270 --> 00:01:16,050 I have been I've been learning a great deal in the last day and a half or rather evening until the morning. 12 00:01:17,220 --> 00:01:21,390 And I am very pleased to have come because as a result of the Arab Spring, 13 00:01:21,390 --> 00:01:26,310 I've been rethinking and rereading about trends, ontology and its strengths and weaknesses. 14 00:01:26,430 --> 00:01:34,500 And I've been daring enough, mad enough to lecture in Tunisia and Egypt, not very successfully in Egypt, as you can see from the results, 15 00:01:35,070 --> 00:01:40,350 trying to advise the governments, the successive governments there on how to deal with their transition issues. 16 00:01:40,900 --> 00:01:47,639 So very quickly, I'm going to start by looking at the so-called Spanish model and I will criticise the trends of talk 17 00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:52,770 to the literature about the Spanish model because I think that's something that's that needs doing. 18 00:01:53,490 --> 00:01:57,930 And I will have a first look at the negotiations themselves and try to tease out 19 00:01:57,930 --> 00:02:01,650 the differences in the similarities that exist with the Spanish experience. 20 00:02:02,310 --> 00:02:08,910 And finally, I will look at some of the criticism that is currently levelled at the transition in Spain, 21 00:02:09,810 --> 00:02:14,700 both from the from the academic world and also from the society more broadly. 22 00:02:15,030 --> 00:02:19,169 As you all know, Spain is experiencing a very difficult economic crisis, 23 00:02:19,170 --> 00:02:27,180 which is resulting also in serious political difficulties, having major political consequences. 24 00:02:27,720 --> 00:02:34,800 And some observers would argue that, in fact, the whole transition settlement is currently in danger of unravelling altogether. 25 00:02:36,540 --> 00:02:39,120 So let me start by saying that, as you all know, 26 00:02:39,240 --> 00:02:45,300 the Spanish transition was one of the first in the so-called third wave of transitions, as Samuel Huntington just called them. 27 00:02:46,170 --> 00:02:49,290 And this therefore, means that by 1989, it was very well known. 28 00:02:49,290 --> 00:02:52,019 And polls have yet to make a mistake. 29 00:02:52,020 --> 00:02:58,530 And others have specifically said that they they are on record saying that the Spanish experience influence them, 30 00:02:58,540 --> 00:03:02,700 that they had visited Spain, they had talked to Spanish leaders to see how they had done it. 31 00:03:03,060 --> 00:03:07,260 So I think the Spanish model can be said that the Spanish model was very much on their minds. 32 00:03:08,400 --> 00:03:16,020 Now, as you know, of the Spanish transition, partly because it was one of the first only Portugal and Greece preceded, 33 00:03:16,020 --> 00:03:22,200 it has become to some extent the quintessential negotiated package of transition. 34 00:03:23,070 --> 00:03:28,830 Scott and Mainwaring have declared it to be the most successful transition by transaction, 35 00:03:29,580 --> 00:03:34,530 and Gunther and Higley have called it the very model of the modern elite settlements. 36 00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:37,440 That's quite a big thing to live up to. 37 00:03:38,760 --> 00:03:44,280 And it's understandable, of course, that the Spanish experience should have attracted so much attention and interest, 38 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:49,610 both among academics and practitioners, particularly, of course, given Spain's very turbulent political history, 39 00:03:49,980 --> 00:03:56,240 not only the 20th century with a civil war and 40 years of authoritarian rule under Franco and also the 19th century, 40 00:03:56,250 --> 00:04:03,990 I think most Spanish prime ministers were murdered in between 1918 70, 41 00:04:04,230 --> 00:04:12,930 1934, and in any other Western European country, in fact, possibly any other European country, including Central Eastern Europe. 42 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:19,649 I have never had a problem with this transition as a transaction narrative in the 43 00:04:19,650 --> 00:04:24,840 sense that I think that it portrays an overly simplistic picture which is distorting, 44 00:04:25,080 --> 00:04:31,950 which has distorted our understanding of the process and continues to cast a slightly ambiguous shadow today. 45 00:04:33,780 --> 00:04:40,979 First of all, because of this emphasis on pacts and negotiated agreements between elites has shifted our attention away 46 00:04:40,980 --> 00:04:47,640 from the very spectacular socio economic transformation of Spain experienced prior to democratisation. 47 00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:48,180 In fact, 48 00:04:48,660 --> 00:04:56,080 I've lectured in Central and Eastern European countries where there was kind of confusion about this and extrapolating from their own experiences. 49 00:04:56,100 --> 00:04:59,880 Audiences there seem to believe that serious economic growth. 50 00:05:00,120 --> 00:05:05,030 Only took place after democratisation with Spain's accession to the EEC in 1986. 51 00:05:05,040 --> 00:05:13,260 In fact, the most important social and economic transformations took place under the Franco regime in the 1960s and early seventies, 52 00:05:15,540 --> 00:05:23,550 and as a result of those. Spain was already a relatively prosperous, free market economy with a relatively large, stable middle class. 53 00:05:23,970 --> 00:05:25,950 By the time of his death in 1975. 54 00:05:26,670 --> 00:05:35,520 Secondly, this emphasis on elites and the role of parents runs the danger of leaving the social movements out of the equation. 55 00:05:36,870 --> 00:05:44,399 And in fact, I think academics could explore far more than they have done the nature of the precise relationship 56 00:05:44,400 --> 00:05:49,830 between those political elites that carried out those parents and expand their social base. 57 00:05:50,550 --> 00:05:56,700 In other words, what I'm suggesting is that this intuition has tended to underestimate the pressure from below, 58 00:05:57,000 --> 00:06:01,170 which very often led to those negotiations in the first place. 59 00:06:02,430 --> 00:06:03,580 Thirdly, this emphasis, 60 00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:11,730 emphasis on elite pacts also draws attention away from the highly favourable European context in which the Spanish transition took place. 61 00:06:12,810 --> 00:06:20,190 In other words, the promise of European Community membership and more generally a favourable 62 00:06:20,190 --> 00:06:25,170 international dimension have played a role which which this narrative often, 63 00:06:25,620 --> 00:06:28,830 often misses or underplays very significantly. 64 00:06:29,430 --> 00:06:38,040 And finally, this kind of narrative can also lead us to underestimate some of the dangers and the pitfalls that existed on the road to democracy. 65 00:06:38,280 --> 00:06:42,390 For example, the Spanish transition is almost invariably described as peaceful. 66 00:06:42,510 --> 00:06:47,370 You will always see this adjective in standard accounts of the process. 67 00:06:48,030 --> 00:06:55,530 But in fact, about 360 people were killed in acts of political violence between 1975 and 1980. 68 00:06:56,070 --> 00:07:02,490 And I'm not just talking about terrorist acts. I'm actually talking about clashes with police demonstrations, strikes, marches and so on. 69 00:07:02,790 --> 00:07:08,790 So, in fact, the Spanish transition was actually probably more violent than the Polish one and many others, in fact. 70 00:07:09,600 --> 00:07:17,760 And this is important because it was partly the fear of social confrontation, which actually explains why those negotiations took place. 71 00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:23,510 If the Spanish transition had a slogan, it was probably never again, never again. 72 00:07:23,520 --> 00:07:27,540 A civil war, never again, a French recital, a struggle among Spaniards. 73 00:07:28,110 --> 00:07:35,370 So if we take the violence out of the equation again, again, it's it doesn't really help us to understand how the process took place. 74 00:07:36,720 --> 00:07:40,920 Let me say a little more before I move on to the negotiations themselves about 75 00:07:42,720 --> 00:07:47,540 things that I think are important to keep in mind when we look at this process. 76 00:07:47,550 --> 00:07:52,710 First of all, regarding the nature of the Franco regime, regarding regime society relations, 77 00:07:53,040 --> 00:07:56,770 regarding the role of the state and regarding the role of the armed forces. 78 00:07:56,790 --> 00:08:00,900 All of these issues have been raised in the course of the sessions yesterday and today. 79 00:08:01,260 --> 00:08:10,470 But I would like to mention a few specific aspects. First of all, someone mentioned yesterday Juan Vince's famous definition of authority and regime. 80 00:08:11,520 --> 00:08:19,130 Let me pay tribute, by the way, to the final is a great, great friend and colleague of mine who died on the 3rd of October last year. 81 00:08:19,140 --> 00:08:26,850 As you probably know, Juan described the Franco regime as the quintessential authoritarian regime. 82 00:08:27,750 --> 00:08:32,130 And this has important consequences for the way in which these negotiations took place. 83 00:08:32,160 --> 00:08:38,220 First of all, the Franco is famous to some extent what Richard Johnson has described as a no party state. 84 00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:45,690 The single party existed and was influential in the thirties and forties, but was an empty shell by the time of Franco's death in 1975. 85 00:08:46,170 --> 00:08:50,370 This therefore meant that the party wasn't represented in these negotiations. 86 00:08:50,370 --> 00:08:56,550 It didn't need to be because it wasn't a significant pact. Secondly, once this idea of limited pluralism, 87 00:08:57,180 --> 00:09:04,139 there had been a lively debate within the Franco regime raging for at least a decade concerning what needed to be 88 00:09:04,140 --> 00:09:10,080 done after Franco's death and how Franco recipients needed to prepare for the consequences of Franco's death. 89 00:09:11,190 --> 00:09:19,080 Thirdly, authoritarian regimes very often develop what Lince and others have described as as institutional facades. 90 00:09:19,110 --> 00:09:24,840 In other words, in order to legitimise themselves, they create laws, procedures, 91 00:09:25,020 --> 00:09:31,410 sometimes even parliaments, which are there basically as self legitimising instruments. 92 00:09:32,580 --> 00:09:36,330 And these are generations of is often very curiously legalistic. 93 00:09:36,450 --> 00:09:46,140 And as a result of all of that, ample use was made of these legal procedures, laws and institutions in dismantling that same of our generation. 94 00:09:49,020 --> 00:09:57,010 A very important fact often missed in comparative studies is that by 75, the final regime was a civilian led for a generation. 95 00:09:57,030 --> 00:10:00,070 It was not a military dictatorship. Me too. 96 00:10:00,720 --> 00:10:02,130 Popular perception sometimes. 97 00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:10,950 And this explains why the army paid played no role whatsoever in the negotiations themselves for an effective in the transition process overall. 98 00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:13,170 Ironically, one could argue, in fact, 99 00:10:13,170 --> 00:10:19,440 that the Polish armed forces were a much more significant actor in the Polish transition than their Spanish counterparts. 100 00:10:19,860 --> 00:10:26,090 Of course, one would have to factor in a key point Carter's role as commander in chief of the Armed Forces. 101 00:10:26,100 --> 00:10:29,910 I wrote a biography of the King a few days ago, so I don't want to underestimate his role. 102 00:10:30,450 --> 00:10:35,760 But having said that, it's interesting how the Army was really almost entirely excluded from the process. 103 00:10:37,650 --> 00:10:41,400 Another important point often overlooked is that people forage in regimes which is 104 00:10:41,550 --> 00:10:45,570 empirically and conceptually impossible to distinguish between state and regime. 105 00:10:48,330 --> 00:10:56,430 And the point I want to stress here is that by the time of his death in 1975, the Spanish state had largely drifted apart from the regime. 106 00:10:57,210 --> 00:11:03,810 It was manned by a marriage of principally recruited civil servants who were either apolitical or even in fact, 107 00:11:03,810 --> 00:11:07,170 anti Franco, as probably many of them in their political leanings. 108 00:11:07,530 --> 00:11:17,490 So this became a force for stability and continuity, finally, as a result of the peculiar nature of this authoritarian regime. 109 00:11:17,910 --> 00:11:22,889 And this is true of Poland as well, and of Hungary as well, and of South Africa. 110 00:11:22,890 --> 00:11:30,190 In fact, as we've heard earlier, political science society had re-emerged by the time effective stuff in 1975. 111 00:11:30,210 --> 00:11:35,430 In other words, although political parties were still legal or illegal, as lenses also call them. 112 00:11:36,120 --> 00:11:43,410 They were largely tolerated. Citizens well read citizens or well-informed citizens knew who the party leaders were. 113 00:11:43,740 --> 00:11:47,740 They more or less knew what their political programs stood for, etc. 114 00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:52,320 In other words, these interlocutors were already in place by the time of his death. 115 00:11:53,020 --> 00:11:58,800 I would say much more about the opposition, other than the fact that it was a combination of new of the new and the old. 116 00:11:59,670 --> 00:12:02,760 Thus the Socialist Party slogan captured that rather well. 117 00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:07,680 We have a party or an old and new party that was over 100 years old. 118 00:12:07,980 --> 00:12:13,680 But the leader was 32. Gonzalez and he'd only joined in the late sixties himself. 119 00:12:15,660 --> 00:12:18,870 Let me now turn turn to the negotiations themselves. 120 00:12:18,870 --> 00:12:22,170 And again, I'll try to tease out these some similarities and differences. 121 00:12:24,270 --> 00:12:27,839 The first obvious point to make, which I think hasn't perhaps been stressed sufficiently so far, 122 00:12:27,840 --> 00:12:33,600 is that negotiations only happen when there is a stalemate or perhaps cognitive mechanism. 123 00:12:34,380 --> 00:12:37,530 But this is a very important, obvious but very important point to make. 124 00:12:39,330 --> 00:12:45,090 The balance of power between the negotiators is can shift over time in the course of negotiations. 125 00:12:45,090 --> 00:12:50,940 But this is a fundamental starting point. Of course, the dynamic in Spain was peculiar for several reasons. 126 00:12:51,870 --> 00:12:56,770 First of all, the opposition was largely excluded from the early stages of the transition. 127 00:12:56,790 --> 00:13:00,540 It was the king and his chosen Prime Minister, Adolfo Persuaded, 128 00:13:00,900 --> 00:13:07,460 who basically initiated the transition by succeeding in getting the Francoist Assembly, 129 00:13:07,480 --> 00:13:15,540 the Franco as Parliament or courts to effectively vote itself out of class of existence and pave the way for democratic elections. 130 00:13:16,920 --> 00:13:22,410 Very importantly, Suarez puts this decision to a referendum which he won handsomely. 131 00:13:23,250 --> 00:13:26,159 And so this may not have been a may not be the greatest factor, 132 00:13:26,160 --> 00:13:32,430 but he was a wonderful tactician and therefore he didn't actually start negotiations with the opposition until after the referendum, 133 00:13:32,850 --> 00:13:38,610 because of course this meant that he was the only person who had any kind of popular mandate, which the opposition didn't have. 134 00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:43,290 So this, I think, is very peculiar and specific to the Spanish context. 135 00:13:45,600 --> 00:13:46,830 Why did they negotiate? 136 00:13:49,600 --> 00:13:57,250 In a nutshell I think the king and and so I congratulated because they needed free elections and a democratic constitution to legitimise the monarchy. 137 00:13:57,940 --> 00:14:03,459 That is that was the essential reason. In addition to that, of course, they had to diffuse social tension. 138 00:14:03,460 --> 00:14:11,710 There was very significant intensive and extensive a popular mobilisation in the early seventies and throughout the transitional period until 79, 139 00:14:11,710 --> 00:14:18,910 80, basically. And we also had the economic fact true of South Africa, Poland and Hungary, as we've heard. 140 00:14:19,390 --> 00:14:25,600 In this case, it was a different economic crisis. In the Spanish case, it was still the impact of the 1974 oil crisis, 141 00:14:25,900 --> 00:14:31,870 which Spain was really only beginning to suffer in 1970 677, in the wake of Franco's death. 142 00:14:33,100 --> 00:14:37,800 Finally, the European dimension, again, absolutely crucial of the kingdom's fight, 143 00:14:37,810 --> 00:14:44,710 as needed to convince the European Community and its major European partners, but also of Germany, Britain and France. 144 00:14:45,750 --> 00:14:51,770 What is wrote in this case that they were genuinely preparing Spain for U.S. membership. 145 00:14:51,790 --> 00:14:55,390 So those were the good old days with democratic conditionality still work in Europe. 146 00:14:58,150 --> 00:15:02,500 One thing that I find very striking is given the reputation, if you like, 147 00:15:02,500 --> 00:15:07,970 of the fame that the Spanish model has achieved is that there was no roundtable moment. 148 00:15:08,950 --> 00:15:13,689 Spaniards do not commemorate any particular negotiating episode, 149 00:15:13,690 --> 00:15:18,730 and that's basically because of the sequence with which in which this process took place. 150 00:15:19,780 --> 00:15:22,900 Very, very briefly, I tend to bore you with the domestic details. 151 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:33,910 The negotiations took place in three separate stages, which I have called pre-election stage, pre constituent stage and constituent stage proper. 152 00:15:35,320 --> 00:15:42,520 So basically what happened was that in the pre-election stage, there were formal talks between Prime Minister Suarez and the Democratic opposition. 153 00:15:44,200 --> 00:15:54,670 A nine member opposition committee was created for this purpose and this nine member committee represented the entire Democratic spectrum liberals, 154 00:15:54,790 --> 00:16:02,170 Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists, and this being Spain, Basques, Catalans and Ulysses. 155 00:16:02,620 --> 00:16:06,760 Okay, so the territorial plus the ideological cleavage was represented. 156 00:16:07,660 --> 00:16:12,580 Interestingly, the trade unions were invited to join this committee, and they declined. 157 00:16:13,390 --> 00:16:15,670 And the reason why they explained was, 158 00:16:15,670 --> 00:16:23,120 I think because they felt sufficiently well represented by the socialist and the communist parties in particular. 159 00:16:23,140 --> 00:16:30,910 So this very close relationship between those two parties and their sister unions is a very important aspect of this process. 160 00:16:32,260 --> 00:16:33,310 What did they negotiate? 161 00:16:33,340 --> 00:16:40,690 Basically, the conditions that the government had to meet in order for the opposition to take part in the first democratic elections. 162 00:16:41,020 --> 00:16:43,690 So again, the dynamic is slightly different to the first case. 163 00:16:43,690 --> 00:16:48,370 The demand was the Spanish government, which was trying to encourage the opposition to take part, 164 00:16:50,050 --> 00:16:59,170 and it was the opposition that was playing hard to get. And basically those conditions included the legalisation of all parties and unions. 165 00:16:59,260 --> 00:17:03,910 The crux here, of course, was the legalisation of the Spanish Communist Party, which the Spanish right, 166 00:17:04,210 --> 00:17:14,400 the armed forces and others weren't particularly looking forward to respect for freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, etc. 167 00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:25,080 The negotiation of an electoral law. This is a very important part of the that the process, of course, the rules of the electoral game and by the way, 168 00:17:25,090 --> 00:17:28,510 the 77 electoral law is basically the one that still exists today. 169 00:17:30,490 --> 00:17:39,580 And finally and this is really the only aspect that wasn't met, the recognition of Spain's territorial pluralism in Spain, 170 00:17:39,580 --> 00:17:44,649 it's very cleverly argued that he hadn't been democratically elected, 171 00:17:44,650 --> 00:17:46,450 nor had the opposition representatives, 172 00:17:46,450 --> 00:17:55,450 and therefore it would be presumptuous of them to prejudge the outcome of the subsequent constituent process in such a crucial structural matter, 173 00:17:55,660 --> 00:18:04,210 such as the territorial issue. These talks, therefore, which took place between approximately January and April 77, 174 00:18:04,450 --> 00:18:09,729 resulted in an informal agreement which translated into specific acts of legislation 175 00:18:09,730 --> 00:18:14,530 as a result of which the first elections were held on the 15th of June 1977. 176 00:18:14,980 --> 00:18:23,950 Again, the difference with the Polish case is clear these were totally free elections to a democratically elected parliament without any constraints. 177 00:18:24,790 --> 00:18:34,720 Unlike those that existed in the 1890 elections in Poland, second stage took place in the summer and early autumn of 1977. 178 00:18:36,850 --> 00:18:40,610 The nature of the negotiation process changed because elections have taken place. 179 00:18:40,630 --> 00:18:43,870 So basically this was a multi-party negotiation. 180 00:18:43,870 --> 00:18:48,400 No longer just the government and the democratic opposition, but a negotiation. 181 00:18:48,620 --> 00:18:52,250 Involving all parties that have been elected to the new parliament. 182 00:18:53,210 --> 00:18:57,530 And these talks produced two very important pieces of legislation. 183 00:18:57,830 --> 00:19:02,750 The most famous are the so-called Montreal Pacts, which I'm sure many of you have heard about. 184 00:19:03,830 --> 00:19:14,060 And they involved basically two things. First of all, very important structural economic reforms and the introduction of direct taxation. 185 00:19:14,150 --> 00:19:17,660 So I regard this basically as the birth of the modern Spanish welfare state. 186 00:19:18,950 --> 00:19:25,220 And additionally, a whole battery of legal modifications, legal measures, 187 00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:32,090 which basically aimed to bridge the existing legislation with that that would be approved once the Constitution was in place. 188 00:19:32,750 --> 00:19:39,650 The other item, much more controversial item, was the amnesty law, also passed in October 1977. 189 00:19:40,880 --> 00:19:44,780 And here what we have basically is amnesty in return for impunity. 190 00:19:46,070 --> 00:19:54,980 In other words, to all those who were in prison at the time for having opposed the French regime, including through the use of force. 191 00:19:55,400 --> 00:20:03,440 So this benefited terrorists such as members of the Basque terrorist organisation ETA were freed and in return for that, 192 00:20:04,460 --> 00:20:11,460 civil servants or people in the service of the Franco regime who might have committed acts of might, 193 00:20:11,460 --> 00:20:18,050 had committed crimes against humanity and so on, were retroactively amnesty as well. 194 00:20:18,410 --> 00:20:21,860 In other words, as a result of this, there were no trials, 195 00:20:21,860 --> 00:20:27,530 no truth and reconciliation commissions, no formal attributions of blame, no apologies and so on. 196 00:20:28,370 --> 00:20:33,530 Let me stress that it was the left that advocated this amnesty law most strongly. 197 00:20:33,710 --> 00:20:39,050 This is an important point to keep in mind. It was not the right that was seeking this concession. 198 00:20:39,050 --> 00:20:41,270 It was the left that insisted on this legislation. 199 00:20:41,280 --> 00:20:48,020 And secondly, I would also argue that there was no popular appetite for anything more ambitious, at least not at the time. 200 00:20:51,470 --> 00:20:56,480 Two key differences come to mind. All three key differences when comparing the Spanish in the first case. 201 00:20:57,500 --> 00:21:00,830 First of all, the pacts greatly strengthen political parties. 202 00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:04,579 The protagonists of these pacts of all political parties, there's no Nelson Mandela. 203 00:21:04,580 --> 00:21:08,030 There's no violence against the Filipinos. 204 00:21:08,060 --> 00:21:11,300 And this was involved. But he didn't play a particularly important role. 205 00:21:12,410 --> 00:21:15,800 So it's basically the parties that are the protagonists of this process. 206 00:21:17,030 --> 00:21:24,829 Secondly, surprising in a Catholic country, the church was totally absent, probably because of its own internal divisions. 207 00:21:24,830 --> 00:21:31,010 The church was so divided internally that if it had taken part by supporting the process actively, 208 00:21:31,190 --> 00:21:34,610 it would have undermined its internal cohesion even further. 209 00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:41,570 Thirdly, if there was no intelligence about the role played by the intelligentsia in Parliament was missing. 210 00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:52,100 But interestingly, the media played a crucial role. And in fact, one particular outlet, the newspaper El Pais, which was born in 1976, 211 00:21:52,700 --> 00:21:58,340 which its first editor convinced Obiang, called some pompously the collective intellectual. 212 00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:06,860 But it played a very important role. It was really this was really the newspaper that explained the peace processes to public opinion. 213 00:22:11,360 --> 00:22:20,530 Let me turn now to the. The criticism of his negotiated peace negotiations and of negotiated transitions generally. 214 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:30,740 As in the case of Spain, Spain's elite settlement has come under very heavy fire, some of it contemporary, some of it more recent. 215 00:22:31,690 --> 00:22:38,680 And as was discussed yesterday, I think there's been more political revision and revisionism than historiographical. 216 00:22:39,250 --> 00:22:42,820 And of course, it's fuelled by the current political and economic crisis. 217 00:22:44,410 --> 00:22:52,420 Part of this crisis criticism, I think, falls under the heading of what Sir Timothy described as the price of velvet yesterday. 218 00:22:52,540 --> 00:23:00,550 In other words, the idea that Spanish democracy was contaminated at best by its excessive continuity with the past. 219 00:23:00,910 --> 00:23:07,270 The head of state today is the same head of state as existed in the months after his death. 220 00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:18,460 Much of the political elite, which governed between 1977 and 1982 and held important political jobs of the Franco regime and so on. 221 00:23:18,850 --> 00:23:24,190 Poles are very familiar with this kind of discourse, as in Poland. 222 00:23:25,120 --> 00:23:30,610 People, particularly on the left, some people on the left have criticised the Opposition for being too accommodating. 223 00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:38,500 They've argued that the regime was much weaker than it seemed at the time and that opposition leaders, communists and socialists effectively sold out. 224 00:23:38,950 --> 00:23:46,210 So the idea of a betrayal is also present, not the idea of conspiracy, but certainly the idea of a betrayal. 225 00:23:46,810 --> 00:23:54,460 And this has led to a rather sterile academic and political debate as to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the regime and the opposition. 226 00:23:55,120 --> 00:24:05,710 And here, this idea of illusions, of retrospective determinism, I think is particularly relevant from a more slightly more sophisticated perspective. 227 00:24:07,150 --> 00:24:11,170 Some have argued that negotiations necessarily required demobilisation. 228 00:24:12,340 --> 00:24:19,329 And the criticism here is that political parties intentionally demobilised social 229 00:24:19,330 --> 00:24:23,050 movements in such a way that was weakened civil society in Spain permanently. 230 00:24:24,550 --> 00:24:33,640 I have always found this rather difficult to swallow, not least because surely civil society, because there isn't an original sin here. 231 00:24:34,270 --> 00:24:37,690 Civil society should have been able to recover from that if that would be the case. 232 00:24:38,380 --> 00:24:43,900 And secondly, I don't like the idea of political elites turning civil society on and off as if it were a switch. 233 00:24:44,830 --> 00:24:46,690 I think it's a little bit more complex than that. 234 00:24:48,310 --> 00:24:55,060 It's true that Spanish civil society is weak and has been weak throughout the last 40 years since Franco died. 235 00:24:55,780 --> 00:25:02,500 But I think the causes for that are much more complex than causes that we can relate directly to the nature of the transition. 236 00:25:04,510 --> 00:25:08,709 The most sophisticated academic critique of these kinds of transitions has been 237 00:25:08,710 --> 00:25:13,840 put forward by a number of Latin American transit geologists who have argued, 238 00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:21,070 to put it very succinctly, that picture transitions or negotiated transitions result in frozen democracies. 239 00:25:21,820 --> 00:25:28,240 The phrase for this is Spanish rhymes. So I will tend to, which is transition back to the democracy. 240 00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:31,840 Okay. That's rather neat before the equation. 241 00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:41,800 So the idea is that the pacts necessarily lead to low quality democracies, basically due to the undemocratic nature of those pacts themselves. 242 00:25:42,610 --> 00:25:48,760 In other words, the idea that these transitions brought in democracy for the people but without the people. 243 00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:58,180 Personally, I really don't see any evidence of this in the Spanish case, given the enormous transformations that are taking place in Spain, 244 00:25:58,870 --> 00:26:07,690 including not least, the most radical process of political decentralisation witnessed anywhere in Europe since World War two. 245 00:26:10,220 --> 00:26:12,280 I would go slightly further than that, though, 246 00:26:12,290 --> 00:26:22,130 and argue that it's probably unhelpful to divide transitions into protected versus unprotected or negotiated versus non negotiated. 247 00:26:23,870 --> 00:26:28,759 I think this dichotomy is too simplistic, not least by the way, because there is always an element of fact, 248 00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:35,900 even in those transitions where the policy of regime comes to an end more abruptly. 249 00:26:36,980 --> 00:26:39,680 And I'm thinking of Greece and Portugal, for example. 250 00:26:41,780 --> 00:26:49,970 But my main objection is that the long term characteristics of new democratic regimes will depend on a very broad array of factors, 251 00:26:50,660 --> 00:26:57,680 very few of which can be related back to the nature of the transition process itself. 252 00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:08,510 I think that this idea that the way in which the transition took place permanently determines the nature of a democracy is again, not very convincing. 253 00:27:09,830 --> 00:27:11,510 More specifically in the Spanish case, 254 00:27:11,510 --> 00:27:22,160 what happened is that a democracy which was established by consensual means has not resulted in a consensual democracy, which is a majority policy. 255 00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:30,380 Okay. So Spain's pact in transition, ironically, has actually resulted in one of the most majoritarian democracies in Europe. 256 00:27:31,190 --> 00:27:34,580 Spain has never had a coalition government. 257 00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:39,500 All of Spain's governments since 77 have been single party governments. 258 00:27:40,610 --> 00:27:45,410 Spain has one of the most impressive records of Cabinet Cabinet stability in the world, 259 00:27:46,220 --> 00:27:49,430 and it has a very low effective number of parliamentary parties. 260 00:27:49,430 --> 00:27:58,160 2.8. All of these are things that you would that you associate with majoritarian democracies, not with consensual or associational ones. 261 00:28:00,890 --> 00:28:10,850 The one area where I perhaps would accept this this frozen democracy thesis is with regard to the handling of the past, the historical memory issue. 262 00:28:12,830 --> 00:28:20,870 And this, as you probably know, is one of the most hotly contested aspects and criticise aspects of the transition settlement. 263 00:28:22,100 --> 00:28:28,820 Spain had no transitional justice, as I explained, as a result of the 1977 amnesty law. 264 00:28:30,230 --> 00:28:34,190 And there is now a very lively debate within Spanish academia and within Spanish 265 00:28:34,190 --> 00:28:38,150 society as a whole as to whether Spain will have a post transitional justice. 266 00:28:40,230 --> 00:28:48,330 By the way, I'd like to strongly recommend a book by a young American academic called Burma International called Democracies Without Justice. 267 00:28:49,260 --> 00:28:57,780 The Politics of Forgetting in Spain. And interestingly, he actually defends the Spanish model, the forgetting model. 268 00:29:01,410 --> 00:29:07,080 As you may know, in fact, last week I saw Pablo de Graaf, who is the UN rapporteur for the Human Rights Committee, 269 00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:14,280 and he has publicly advocated that Spain should repeal the 1977 amnesty law, 270 00:29:15,030 --> 00:29:22,980 which is not going to happen quite simply because there is no social consensus in Spain concerning these matters for several reasons. 271 00:29:23,010 --> 00:29:28,829 First of all, I think there are a lot of difficulties concerning this whole debate and spent the first, 272 00:29:28,830 --> 00:29:34,970 of course, is that most of the repression that we're talking about took place in the 1930s and the 1940s. 273 00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:45,300 And secondly, there is no social consensus in Spain regarding the rights and wrongs of the Second Republic, 274 00:29:45,390 --> 00:29:49,110 the Civil War, and being Franco coup of 1936. 275 00:29:50,010 --> 00:29:55,590 This doesn't mean that significant sectors of Spanish society near Franco is on the contrary. 276 00:29:56,160 --> 00:30:00,270 I think only four or 5% of the population would describe themselves in this way. 277 00:30:00,930 --> 00:30:12,750 But many Spaniards do believe that given the direction the republic was taking, the coup was inevitable or to some extent justifiable. 278 00:30:14,130 --> 00:30:18,600 And finally, of course, this whole issue has been compounded by the impact of ETA terrorism. 279 00:30:18,750 --> 00:30:25,590 The 800 people ETA has assassinated since 1960 until the year 2011, 280 00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:36,360 because many of the policemen involved in the worst atrocities were, in fact, involved in anti-terrorist activity. 281 00:30:37,710 --> 00:30:42,180 My personal view is that there will never be a Truth and Reconciliation Committee commission. 282 00:30:42,180 --> 00:30:51,150 I don't think it would help at this stage. I don't accept the claim that it has been impossible to do research in Spain into the past, 283 00:30:51,870 --> 00:30:56,460 and I think that's an insult to the Spanish historical academic community. 284 00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:02,159 I think there is there is very considerable knowledge of the nature and the magnitude of 285 00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:06,600 the repression that took place both during the Civil War and during the post-war period. 286 00:31:08,070 --> 00:31:13,020 But I think a great deal can be done and should be done with regards to reparation of victims. 287 00:31:13,590 --> 00:31:18,180 According to some estimates, there are about 100,000 unmarked graves in Spain. 288 00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:23,790 So the exhumation of these victims should be a top priority. 289 00:31:24,180 --> 00:31:31,499 In 2006, the Zapatero government passed a historical memory law without the support of the conservative opposition, 290 00:31:31,500 --> 00:31:40,290 as it then was, and sadly, as a result of the lack of a fundamental consensus, this law has not been fully implemented. 291 00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:50,040 But just to end on an optimistic note, last week the Spanish government decided to award Spanish nationality to Sephardic Jews, 292 00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:58,410 people of Sephardic Jewish origin who simply need to demonstrate that they have some association with Spain going back five, four years. 293 00:31:58,980 --> 00:32:04,220 If you are able to do this, which is actually quite easy, you are automatically awarded Spanish nationality. 294 00:32:04,230 --> 00:32:07,890 According to some estimates, as many as 300,000 Israelis are planning to do this. 295 00:32:08,970 --> 00:32:12,630 So my take is the Spanish society can do this. 296 00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:16,740 Surely it can develop some kind of reparations policy. Thanks very much.