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Spain Political Parties
Prior to the arrival of participatory democracy in
Spain in
the late 1970s, Spanish citizens had scant experience with
political involvement. Suffrage was extremely limited,
electoral
mechanisms were controlled and corrupt, and political
parties
were elitist. Under the Francoist regime, Spanish society
was
depoliticized; the only political formation officially
sanctioned
was the National Movement. Remnants of the socialist and
the
communist parties functioned underground, and they were
subject
to severely repressive measures
(see The Franco Years
, ch.
1).
After forty years without parliamentary elections,
political
parties were revived, and they proliferated in the months
following Franco's death. Leftist parties that had been
exiled or
had functioned clandestinely, such as the communists and
the
Socialists, had existing organizations and ideological
traditions
to form the bases of renewed political activity. The
center and
the right, however, had no such structures in place, and
they
lacked experience in political involvement. The coalition
party
that was victorious in the first elections of the new
democratic
regime in June 1977, the center-right UCD, failed to
develop a
coherent political vision. Its brief period of success was
due
largely to the charisma of its leader, Suarez, and the
party
ultimately succumbed to its internal conflicts.
With the victory of the PSOE in 1982, Spain's political
system moved from a moderate right-left division to a
predominance of the center-left. Support for the PSOE had
become
less class-based and more widespread as Spain underwent
economic
transformation and as the party became less dogmatic. In
general,
the tendency of Spain's party politics has been toward the
center, and support for extremist parties has declined
markedly,
which bodes well for the country's future stability.
Data as of December 1988
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