Spain

There was a time when geography teachers in northern Europe would often use an examination question that read: “Europe ends at the Pyrenees. Discuss.” Travelers who visited Spain before the advent of mass tourism in the 1960s retain impressions of what appeared to be essentially a Third World country, not quite Africa, but certainly qualitatively different to anything else to be experienced in western Europe at that time. The so-called express trains took over 14 hours to run from Madrid to Barcelona, Spain's two most important cities, although, as the crow flies, the distance is only 300 miles. Today, modern electric trains run from Seville to Madrid, on to Barcelona, then through France to Paris. They are so fast and comfortable that Spanish airlines have reduced and cancelled many flight routes. In the 21st century, a British train operator chose the Spanish word Adel-ante to be the brand name of its new breed of fast diesel trains, which speaks volumes about changes in both Spain's external image and its real economy.

From 1939 until the death of the dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975, the economic environment of business in Spain tended toward isolationism and protectionism. Large government-backed monopolies dominated key industrial sectors. In Spanish discourse, the years 1975–86 are known as the “transition.” In English-speaking circles, this word tends to be associated with the end of communism in Russia and the eastern bloc, and it could be argued that in many ways, Spain was the first European country to peacefully evolve from a near-totalitarian, planned economy to a pluralist, market-based democracy.

After Franco's death, instead of the chaos that many feared, there developed a carefully crafted and intelligently manipulated transition from autarky toward a modern pluralist society. This phenomenon, together with the collapse of communism in eastern Europe [Page 1472]and Russia between 1989 and 1991, made Spain the target for many commentators, journalists, and academics interested in the possibility of a “role model” that offered lessons in peaceful change in the post-Cold War world. It can be argued that Spain's success contrasts with the dismal experience of, say, the Soviet Union, which, unlike Spain, lacked the institutions that were capable of adapting to a new democratic and market-orientated order.

A beach in Spain's Canary Islands. A tourism-related building boom brought 30 percent of all immigrants to the EU to Spain.

Today, Spain is one of the most regionalized countries of the European Union (EU), with democratically structured autonomous communities such as Catalonia, Galicia, and Andalucia taking full responsibility for a wide range of government functions including education and economic development. Spain's postdictatorship embracing of regional autonomy without the dreadful balkanization experienced by Yugoslavia provides another contrast with the communist transition.

In common with the leaders of those members of the eastern bloc (Poland and Slovenia, for example) whose transitions are widely regarded as having been more successful, most Spanish modernizers (the aperturistas) realized from an early stage that close contact with and eventual membership in the EU's institutions would underpin and protect their new democracy and help foster economic development.

...