Clearly, it is not a question of saying that Spain lacks the structure of a sover eign state, but of highlighting the weakness of its lib eral and demo cratic founda tions throughout con tempor ary his tory, despite attempts by Spanish repub licans and polit ical Catalanism to move it forward, to make Spain a modern coun try com­ par able to recog nized Euro pean and North Amer ican lib eral democracies.