This book, exploring the making of democracy in Spain during the twenty long years before the death of Franco, seeks out the beginnings of democratic struggles at the grass roots of civil society. Rather than one more account of the transition to democracy in Spain, this is the story of the countless unsung heroes who prepared the political terrain of this transition. The story suggests that it was social needs and economic demands which spawned individual discontent and political dissent, but that the struggle itself required continual political organization and calculation. The book therefore explores the personal networks and political strategies which sustained the struggle, and reveals that their contribution to the making of democracy was often contradictory and always piecemeal. Democratic struggle is not defined by a single idea of democracy, but by myriad attempts to achieve more autonomous action and more effective forms of representation.

"...Professor Joe Foweraker takes an interesting and insightful, yet controversial, look at how events and events at the grassroots of society helped lay the foundation for democracy." Thomas D. Lancaster, Bulletin of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Studies