2018/06/07 by Alejandro Martínez Relanzón · 20 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Spanish History and Politics #Political Theory and Democracy #History of Education in Spain
paper · pdf · doi:10.17951/k.2017.24.1.145
openalex publication_date 2018/06/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The advent of democracy in most European countries was preceded by a long constitutional tradition that dates back to the early 19th century. In Spain, the process, that had begun in 1812, was interrupted in 1923 by a military coup. The democracy started eight years later with the advent of the Republic, but with a very unstable political regime in place that eventually led the country into a civil war and four decades of totalitarianism. For many historians though, the constitutional monarchy in Spain, in place since 1876, avoided modernization and democratization. Many critics insure that the mechanisms of political representation; the elections, the political parties, and the election procedure, prevented the constitutional liberalism in Spain to evolve into a full democracy. Along these lines, they claim that every election was the result of the electoral fraud. However, the analysis of the aforementioned factors refutes these assertions and dispels most of the misconceptions that have been accepted until now.