They were seven crucial years for the future of the country: from the death of the dictator Franco in 1975 until the coming to power of the PSOE led by Felipe González in 1982. The Dmax channel recalls those decisive days in the transition from a long dictatorship to a young and fragile one democracy with the premiere this Monday of Los años de la Transición, a new two-episode documentary series that is completed with reports focused on the gaze of historians and journalists.
The legalization of the Communist Party of Spain, the general elections of June 1977, the coup d'état of February 23, 1981... The Transition Years includes in its two one-hour episodes everything that happened at that time " in a descriptive way but not simply chronologically, but rather an attempt is made to put the facts in context”, advances Manel Lucas, director of the project together with Luis Carrizo. "The majority of opinion and analysis remains for the reports with the eyes of historians and journalists who experienced it firsthand," he adds in conversation with La Vanguardia.
Were these years the most turbulent of the 20th century in Spain? “Clearly it was the most convulsive political and social period since the Civil War because the Franco regime, as a dictatorial regime, tried to make things change as little as possible and suddenly a window of opportunity opened up,” Carrizo replies. Those were years in which “things did not stop happening in Spain in the political, social and cultural spheres and there was also, obviously, the weight of violence from both the extreme right and the extreme left”.
Carrizo specifies that in the docuseries much emphasis has been placed on how all this violence affected decision-making, internal tensions and the possibility of advancing that democratic path. “And it is also good that we say that these are turbulent years because that is how the theory of a regime granted by the elites of the old regime who suddenly change their mentality and become democrats is dismantled,” adds Lucas.
On whether the Transition was as exemplary a process as has been claimed, Lucas replies that he would like, after watching the series, "to remain the idea that it was a clash of impotence in which the old regime failed to impose a system as it wanted but the fully democratic forces did not manage to get as far as they wanted either”. In this game of pressure, some had to concede more than they imagined and others had to resign themselves to less than they wanted. "But it is true that if an Amnesty Law was approved that allowed political prisoners to go out on the streets, which was what was most valued in 1977, it is also true that accounts with the torturers were not settled through the back door," among other negative figures of the regime."That is the underlying idea in the series."
For his part, Carrizo considers that the exemplary description does not fit what happened in Spain. “More than an exemplary process, I think we have to talk about a possibility that perhaps from the current point of view can be read hypercritically. We try to put context to what happened. The interesting thing about revisiting the Transition is to take away bombastic qualifiers and adjectives and situate it in the plane of a reality that from our eyes seems extremely complex”.
Juan Carlos I played a key role in those years, although there are still doubts regarding his position in the 23F coup. How does the docuseries approach it? “What we know so far is told, that the King somehow, consciously or unconsciously, gave wings to a series of people who criticized Adolfo Suárez and wanted to kill him. And among those people there were some with more democratic conviction and others with less”, answers Lucas, who also highlights, however, the reality that was seen on 23F and that is that “Juan Carlos I went on television and stopped the coup”. What happened in the previous hours "and if he had that conviction from the first moment, no one can say for sure."
Regarding his role in general during the Transition, in the docuseries it is stated that the King wanted above all else to keep the crown and maintain the monarchy. "And the crown could not survive if it was linked to the dictatorship, with which, Juan Carlos I was willing to have an opening towards democracy, although neither he nor anyone else knew what it consisted of when his reign began." The King, like the rest of the politicians of the time, moved in unknown terrain and advanced according to the circumstances. "I think Juan Carlos I was pragmatic and played his cards as far as he could," adds Carrizo.
The two episodes of The Years of the Transition are completed with reports that collect testimonies from historians and journalists. Is there a coincidence in how you see those years? “The vision that historians have of the Transition is that it was a process that nobody knew how it would end and that it ended acceptably for those years in Spain. And that it was a clash of impotence in which the remnants of Francoism had to accept things that in principle they did not want and, on the other hand, the democratic parties, the social movements and the people on the street pressured to push as far as they could” Lucas replies. Among other historians, Juan Pablo Fusi, Elena Martínez, Jesús Palacios, Miguel Martorell, Tom Burns, Xosé María Núñez Seixas, Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer, Juan Francisco Fuetes, Joan B. Culla, Carme Molinero, Abdón Mateos, Pere Ysàs, Aránzazu participate. Sarría, Duncan Wheeler, Gurutz Jáuregui, José Luís Martín Ramos, Xavier Casals and Xavier Domènech.
In the case of journalists, the privileged testimony of people who lived those years from within is collected. "The journalists' vision is of an uncertainty that appears on November 20, 1975 and that, as things happened, some more anticipated than others, most of them opted to bypass journalistic objectivity and work in favor of the democracy". Juan Luis Cebrián, Manuel Campo Vidal, Nativel Preciado, Pilar Eyre, Ladislao Azcona, Margarita Sáenz-Díez Trías, Maria Eugènia Ibàñez and The Times correspondent in Spain during the Transition, William Chislett, participate.
