From fascist dictatorship to democracy: lessons to be learnt and taught about the Spanish Transition

In 1995, twenty years after the death of General Franco, the television programme La Transición (Victoria Prego) offered viewers a widely accepted narrative of Spain’s passage from dictatorship to democracy.

As a secondary school student in Birmingham, Duncan Wheeler watched the programme and was persuaded that the Transition represented Spain’s great success story. Fifteen years later, he began writing a book on the subject, Following Franco: Spanish Culture and Politics in Transition.

In this talk, Wheeler discusses how the Transition has been conceptualised by historians and in the public sphere in complex and sometimes contradictory ways in 1995, 2010, and 2026. Given the reactionary turn in global politics, Franco—who claimed to have made Spain great again—arguably has more in common with the political class of 2026 than he did at the time of his death half a century ago.

The talk explores the extent to which this shift implies that the stakes have risen for the teaching of the Transition in Spain and abroad, while also considering what lessons can be learned about fascism and democracy as socio-political structures.

This event will also be available to attend online.