Introduction

The introduction looks at contemporary debates concerning the Spanish transition to democracy and how they evolved in the last decades. It explores the historiographical and theoretical challenges related to the inclusion of civic movements in the explanation of the process of democratisation. It presents the implications of new social movements and prefigurative politics literature to the Spanish case, attempting to overcome the traditional “bottom up-to down” debate. It also examines the concept of citizenship that emerged in Spain in those years that was not necessarily associated with liberal, representative democracy, but with a more participative model that maintained vertical interactions with the State as well as horizontal ones with other citizens through the professional, spiritual or communal spaces of everyday life.