Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
HAVING SPENT MORE THAN ONE THIRD OF A CENTURY IN THE TALL and narrow dungeon of Franco's authoritarian regime, Spain now stands on the threshold of an uncharted future. Not even those who say that the 35-odd million inhabitants mostly enjoyed the shade and the miasma can deny that the silhouette there for all to see is, unsurprisingly, that of a hesitant convalescent. Anxious questions concerning the future of Spain do not owe their acuity to the dread of what appears inevitable, but rather to the wide range of apparently equally probable alternatives.
1 The main points of this article were the basis for a briefing on the Iberian peninsula given by the author in Barcelona on 27 August 1975 to a group of members of the US House of Representatives under the chairmanship of the Speaker of the House, The Hon. Carl Albert (Dem. Ohio).