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this, fuelled in the 1960s and 1970s by a growing tourist industry, but Catalunya
(along with the Basque Country, another thorn in Franco’s side) was still
economically backward, with investment per head lower than anywhere else
in the country. Absentee landlords took much of the local revenue, a situation
exacerbated by Franco’s policy of encouraging emigration to Catalunya from
other parts of Spain (and granting the immigrants land) in an attempt to dilute
regional differences.
Despite the
cultural and political repression
, the distinct Catalan identity
was never really obliterated: the Catalan Church retained a feisty independ-
ence, while Barcelona emerged as the most important publishing centre in
Spain. Clandestine language and history classes were conducted, and artists and
writers continued to produce work in defiance of the authorities. Nationalism
in Catalunya, however, did not take the same course as the Basque
separa-
tist movement
, which engendered the terrorist organization ETA (Euzkadi
ta Azkatasuna; “Basque Homeland and Freedom”). There was little violence
against the state in Catalunya and no serious counterpart to ETA.The Catalan
approach was subtler: an audience at the Palau de la Música sang the unofficial
Catalan anthem when Franco visited in 1960; a massive petition against
language restrictions was raised in 1963; and a sit-in by Catalan intellectuals at
Montserrat was organized in protest against repression in the Basque Country.
As Spain became comparatively more wealthy, so the political bankruptcy of
Franco’s regime and its inability to cope with popular demands became clearer.
Higher incomes, the need for better education and a creeping invasion of
Western culture made the anachronism of Franco ever more apparent. His only
reaction was to attempt to withdraw what few signs of increased liberalism had
crept through, and his last years mirrored the repression of the postwar period.
Franco’s death and the new democracy
When Franco died in 1975,
King Juan Carlos
was officially designated to
succeed as head of state – groomed for the succession by Franco himself.The
king’s initial moves were cautious in the extreme, appointing a government
dominated by loyal Franquistas, who had little sympathy for the growing oppo-
sition demands for “democracy without adjectives”. In the summer of 1976,
demonstrations, particularly in Madrid, ended in violence, with the police
upholding the old authoritarian ways.
To his credit, Juan Carlos recognized that some real break with the past was
urgent and inevitable, and, accepting the resignation of his prime minister,
set in motion the process of
democratization
. His newly appointed prime
minister,Adolfo Suárez, steered through a Political Reform Act, which allowed
for a two-chamber parliament and a referendum in favour of democracy; he
also legitimized the Socialist Party (the PSOE) and the Communists, and called
elections for the following year, the first since 1936.
In the elections of 1977, the
Pacte Democratico per Catalunya
– an alli-
ance of pro-Catalan parties – gained ten seats in the lower house of the Spanish
parliament (Basque nationalists won a similar number) dominated by Suárez’s
own centre-right UCD party but also with a strong Socialist presence. In a
spirit of consensus and amnesty, it was announced that Catalunya was to be
granted a degree of autonomy, and a million people turned out on the streets
of Barcelona to witness the re-establishment of the Generalitat and to welcome
home its president-in-exile,
Josep Tarradellas
. A new Spanish constitution of
1978 allowed for a sort of devolution within a unitary state, and the
Statute of
Autonomy
for Catalunya was approved on December 18, 1979, with the first
CONTEXTS
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A history of Barcelona and Catalunya