THE TRANSITION IN CASTILLA Y LEÓN: DEMOCRACY, AUTONOMY, AND THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

This book is intended as a small tribute to those who, whether from a more public or more anonymous position, fought in Castile and León to build and consolidate democracy in Spain. The Transition is the most significant period in Spain's recent history. Indeed, during the ten years between 1975 and 1985, the country transitioned from dictatorship to democracy (1978), created the State of the Autonomous Communities (which Castile and León joined in 1983), and certified its entry into the European Economic Community (1985), the club of democratic countries par excellence in the Western world. It is therefore not surprising that the Transition has been the focus of numerous books and articles, both by popularizers (writers, essayists, journalists, etc.) and by social researchers in the academic community, from the very years in which these processes took place to the present day. Initially, most of these writings analyzed the Transition from a predominantly political perspective and concluded that the democratization process that the country underwent between the 1970s and 1980s was the result of the planned actions of the political elites, led by the prominent figures of King Juan Carlos I, the President of the Government, Adolfo Suárez, and the President of the Cortes, Torcuato Fernández Miranda (all of them occupying positions inherited from the dictatorship); and supported by the leaders of the main opposition parties (Felipe González, Santiago Carrillo, Manuel Fraga)