ABSTRACT
The transition to democracy can be regarded as an attempt by the Francoist political class to adjust its institutions to the requirements of modern society. In the 1970s, a growing dislocation between the social and the political sphere turned into a source of great concern for a regime forced to confront the numerous problems affecting Spanish society. Francoism, in spite of various attempts to adapt itself to a changing domestic and international environment, remained ill-suited to rule a country experiencing continuous and deep transformations of far-reaching consequences – a country which had evolved from a rural into an industrial society and whose wealthier and more industrialized areas were Catalonia and the Basque Country.
