ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the parallel processes of transition to democracy and European Community (EC) accession of Spain within the complex Cold War context. More particularly, it studies the margins of manoeuvre of Spain as a smaller Cold War power and its strategies in retracing a way back to democracy and mainstream foreign relations as part of a paradigmatically convergent transitional Europeanism. To achieve these aims, this chapter focuses on the entangled constraints and opportunities of Spain’s catch-up convergence and ‘Return to Europe’ scenarios, which would have a later mirror in the case of the EU’s Eastward enlargement process. This piece navigates the challenges to the consolidation of a post-transitional democracy in Cold War Spain while nuancing the weight of exogenous and endogenous factors in correlation with the process of Europeanisation. Furthermore, it also emphasises the leverage of Spanish pro-democracy players and delves into the influence of American agency in the studied developments. In this regard, it aims to fill the gap between a contextual bipolar opposition mindset and the soft power trajectories of the intertwined European integration process.
