This collection of essays focuses on the social, political and cultural transformations witnessed in Spain in the late 1970s. By combining top-down and bottom-up approaches, the volume offers a renewed approach to the peaceful (re-)birth of Spanish democracy and to those actors and factors that made it possible.

Gregorio Alonso is Lecturer of Spanish History at the University of Leeds, and has previously taught at King's College London. He has published on politico-religious conflict and secularization in Modern Europe in journals and edited volumes. His monograph La ciudadanía católica y sus enemigos. La cuestión religiosa en España will be published in 2010.

Diego Muro is Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals. Prior to joining IBEI, he was Lecturer in European Studies at King's College, London. He is the author of Ethnicity and Violence: the Case of Radical Basque Nationalism (Routledge, 2008) and of various articles on nationalism, political violence, social movements and democratisation.

Introduction.Gregorio Alonso and Diego MuroPart I: Politics 1. The Spanish Model Revisited. Richard Gunther 2. The Selection of an Electoral System: Less Consensus, More Heresthetics. José Ramón Montero and Ignacio Lago 3. Interparty Consensus and Partisanship in Spain's Transition to Democracy. Bonnie N. FieldPart II: Civil Society 4. Radicalism without Representation: On the Character of Social Movements in the Spanish Transition to Democracy. Pablo Sánchez León 5. Children of a Lesser God: The Political and the Pastoral Action of the Spanish Catholic Church. Gregorio AlonsoPart III: Nationalism 6. Salvation by Betrayal: The Left and the Spanish Nation. Alejandro Quiroga 7. The Basque Experience of the Transition to Democracy. Diego MuroPart IV: Memory 8. 'Pacto de Olvido'. Carsten Humlabaek 9.Cinema and Television in the Transition. Paul Julian SmithPart V: International Dimension 10. The Role of the EEC in the Spanish, Portuguese and Greek Transitions. José M. Magone 11. Democratizing Spain: Lessons for International Democratic Promotion. Omar Encarnación