Within the latest theoretical contributions of social and political history, this project aims to study in depth both democracy and the construction and evolution of modern Spanish political cultures, insisting on the complex relationship between the main political cultures of republicanism, anarchism, socialism and democracy. It will focus on three historical moments:

1. The crisis of the parliamentary monarchy, 1900-1930; 
2. Second Spanish Republic, Spanish Civil War and Early Francoism, 1931-1959; 
3. Second Francoism, Transition and democratic consolidation, 1959-1986. 

The historical analysis will be carried out from within the three political cultures mentioned, in relation to Spanish nationalism and gender identities and from the comparative perspective with southern Europe and the United States. With this diversity of approaches and perspectives in three key historical moments, the mutual achievements and influences of this fruitful, but conflictive and difficult relationship at many moments in the 20th century will be seen. The project will focus primarily on three key historical moments:

1. The first third of the twentieth century was interesting for observing the response of the different political cultures to the limits and possibilities of universal male suffrage and to the transition from elite politics to mass politics. This was also the time of the first wave of democratisation in much of Europe, so that the different political cultures found themselves at a crucial political moment, as the masses not only assumed the leading role in political life, but also, increasingly in more and more places, control of the levers of power.
2. Spanish Second Republic, Spanish Civil War and early Francoism, in which attention will be paid mainly to the possibilities and influences of the first Spanish democratic experience, as well as to the attraction of revolution and reaction in a large part of the political spectrum, due to the growing influence of the anti-liberal and anti-democratic movements in the context of the inter-war period. To this is added the gender and national identity aspects of political cultures as a whole, and the analysis of the experience of the hardest years of Francoism (1939-1959) in the consideration of democracy as the central objective of the political cultures of the Spanish left (defeated in the civil war). Thus, the analysis of anti-fascism during the interwar period, as a mobilising mortar against the expansion of the enemies of liberalism and democracy and its main achievements (individual rights and freedoms, social reforms and gender equality), as well as the consequences of its triumph after the Spanish Civil War, especially in the form of repression from different perspectives, will be central elements of this group's research.
3. Late Francoism and the Democratic Transition, periods in which all points of the political spectrum converged towards a Western European-style democracy, in such a way that both the clandestine revolutionary groups of the last years of Francoism, the main traditions of the Spanish left and the more moderate positions of the liberal and Christian Democrat right evolved until they contributed decisively to making Spain a consolidated democracy integrated into the European context.

The analysis will be carried out from different perspectives:

1. From an internal analysis of left-wing political cultures, through which to observe their positioning in relation to the aforementioned processes (democracy, democratisation, transitional processes, gender and national identities).
2. From a comparative and even transnational perspective that leads to highlighting the aspects and processes in which the political cultures of the Spanish left participated in connection with those of other geographies, mainly France, Italy and Portugal, due to their thematic and geographical proximity to Spain; as well as with the United States, for acting as a radiator of democratising ideals and formulas since the beginning of the first third of the 20th century due to its position as a hegemonic country in the international order.

Partners

• Vicenta Verdugo Martí - Florida Secondary and University Education Centre (Valencia) 

Research and experimental development on social sciences and humanities