Few Western European polities underwent as many dramatic changes in the mid-twentieth century as Spain, and yet succeeded in establishing stable, fully consolidated democratic systems. Spain developed a fully democratic regime in 1931, the first in its long history. But this government was extremely unstable and collapsed in a bloody civil war just five years after its founding. An interlude of nearly four decades of authoritarian rule followed. A transition to democracy began in 1975, but in a very short period of time Spain was able to establish a stable, consolidated parliamentary monarchy indistinguishable in many ways from many other Western European democracies. Thus, over the course of just six decades, Spain underwent an extraordinarily broad array of political experiences: from polarized, unstable democracy, to civil war, to authoritarian repression, to uncertain transition, to successful democratic consolidation.

Even this overview, breathtaking as it may be, fails to do full justice to the scope of the political, social, economic, and cultural changes that Spain has undergone. Indeed, between Franco's death in 1975 and the mid-1980s its political system underwent two transitions: one from authoritarianism to democracy, the other from a highly centralized state to one in which considerable political power and fiscal resources devolved on autonomous regional governments. The magnitude of the socialstructural change has been equally impressive. From a situation of semiperipheral underdevelopment, Spain transformed itself into a country whose social and economic characteristics were comparable to those of other advanced Western European societies in less than 20 years, compared with the five or six decades required by most other European countries to develop economically.