Spain's transition to democracy, broadly defined as the period between Franco's death in 1975 and the arrival of a Socialist government in 1982, has often been lauded as an example of good leadership and successful political development. For the better part of four decades, the changes that Spain underwent to join the club of Western democracies have been a source of political legitimation. In recent years, however, this positive view has started to crumble under the scrutiny of scholarly research and the ruthlessness of political conflict. My research investigates the role and relevance of this period of Spanish history by focusing on one under-analysed dimension: its impact on the Spaniards' collective memory.
As a milestone in the country's political history, and one that has become a founding myth for the Spanish democracy, the transitional period is bound to have shaped collective memory. However, until now academic research has focused on the history of the period, that is, what really happened and who the agents of change were. As necessary as this line of investigation is, it is also vital to research whether, and how, these events have become part of the collective memory. The transition was, after all, when the contemporary understandings of democracy, modernity and even Europeanness came into Spaniards' lives after four decades of ideological and political repression. It is thus important to know how these notions were received and developed over time, what shape the changes took in the collective consciousness, and what lessons or overarching themes have been drawn and taught to new generations.
My research addresses this gap in the literature by following Assmann's distinction of cultural (institutionalised) and communicative (individual) memory. Regarding the former, I analyse academic sources and textbooks to discover what narrative of the transition has become the 'official story', the one that new generations learn. For contrast, I also conduct oral history interviews of high school students in Madrid and Navarra. Through these interviews, I aim at unveiling how much of the official narrative they have internalised, and whether they are knowledgeable of (traditionally overlooked) dissenting stories.
The results demonstrate that there is a divide between the cultural and communicative aspects of Spanish collective memory. The official narrative, by focusing on the success story and political feat of the transition, often overlooks the social struggles and political oppositions of the time. The youngest generations imbibe this simplified narrative at school and through press media, yet they also possess and recall contradicting pieces of information, obtained mostly through family stories. Nonetheless, these family memories, which often speak of political confrontation or even violence in the streets, are rarely incorporated into the students' structural and formal knowledge of the transition as a historical period. Given the political significance of the transition as founding myth for the Spanish democracy, this insight into the rather divided collective memory (and limited historical knowledge of the new generations) sparks interesting questions about how Spaniards perceive and understand their country's history and role as a modern democracy.
