Barcelona's Civil Movements of the 1970s in their Struggle for Democracy

The Spanish democratisation – called ‚transición’ – is mostly examined ‘from above’. Countless historians have analysed how the great players in this Process - moderate francoists in the government and the democratic opposition leaders - have brought about democratic transformation of the Francoist Regime after the death the dictator. Skill and peacefulness of these great players are usually pointed out. The multitudes of the Spaniards are often described as receiving mass of these processes. The doctoral dissertation of Florian Musil focuses on the other part of democratisation in Spain: the struggle of the Antifrancoist Social Movements for Democracy which often was not peaceful due to the repression on the part of francoist police and military, also after the death of Franco him self. The Analyse focuses on the metropolitan area of Barcelona as one of the spearhead regions in this struggle and includes broad scale of different movements including the illegal labour movement, the legal neighbours movement, the semi legal student movement, the solidarity movement with the political prisoners, the catalanist movement, the progressive currents within the catholic church, as well as the feminist movement ore the movement for equalitarian educational opportunities. Musil wants to point out the social mobilisation as important agent of the the Social Change to Democracy. As tool to fathom this role Florian Musil applies the four most important Social Movement Theories elaborated by sociologists and combines them in one analyse scheme to evaluate the movements one by one as well as there networks, like the famous Assemblea de Catalunya ore common infrastructures facilitated by clerics and/ore leftwing opposition parties, like the “omnipresent” communist party Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC).

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