ABSTRACT
In Spain, relations between religion and politics, characterized in previous centuries by mutual tensions and distrust, have gone through major changes during the last decades. These changes have been led by two processes that have had a profound social impact: the process of secularization initiated during the 1960s, and the process of political transition to democracy since the late 1970s onwards. The logical evolution of both processes has contributed to a ‘redirection’ of mutual relations among religious institutions (especially Roman Catholic ones), the state and civil society. Such ‘redirection’, which is based on a different type of social leadership of religion, obliges the analyst to review not only theories about religion, especially the secularization theory, but also those approaches related to the evolution of democracy in contemporary society.1
