“Terrorism”, “democracy” and the Spanish 1978 “constitution”: transitional concepts, post-transitional metaphors

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that during the Spanish Transition (1975–1982) there was a gradual semantic displacement that would strongly condition subsequent usages of the terms “terrorism”, “democracy” and “Constitution” in mass public discourse as supposedly designating self-evident realities, rather than ontologically unstable and socially constructed entities. While the meaning of these three signifiers had been hotly debated as part of the transitional process, by 1982 “democracy” had been reduced to its understanding as a reform of (rather than a break with) the Franco regime; “terrorism” was consistently used in public discourse as synonymous with sub-State political violence (as opposed to State political violence); and the so-called “Constitution” had assumed the mantle of sacrosanct foundation of the current “democratic” order. Accordingly, since the Spanish Transition, real and fabricated “terrorist” attacks have been constantly instrumentalised to reinforce (the perceived need of protecting) “democracy” by opposition, particularly as enshrined in the 1978 “Constitution”. From the perspectives of cultural sociology and critical discourse analysis, I carry out a critical revisionist account of the classical state-centric views on the transitional period to show how the Spanish post-transitional regime has been built not only despite terrorism, but also through it.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish transition
• terrorism
• democracy
• constitution

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Henceforth, I will use “terrorism”, “democracy” and “Constitution” (in quotation marks) to refer to (discursively mediated) concepts, and democracy, terrorism and Constitution (without quotation marks) to refer to their objective correlates, respectively.

2. Spanish acronym for the Socialist Worker’s Party, founded in 1879.

3. Spanish acronym for Communist Party of Spain, founded in 1921.

4. See Herman & O’Sullivan 1982; (Chomsky 1988); Herman 1989; Stampnitzky 2016, 18, 24.

5. Spanish acronym for “Revolutionary, Anti-fascist and Patriotic Front”.

6. Spanish acronym for “1st October Groups for Anti-Fascist Resistance”.

7. Spanish acronym for “Iberian Movement of Liberation”.

8. ETA-V is a split from ETA (1959, Basque acronym for “Basque Homeland and Freedom”) that was created in 1970. From 1974 on, it became known as ETA p-m (político-militar).

9. For a discussion of the idea of governing through terrorism, see (Mythen and Walklate 2006), 394, and (Mavelli 2016), 237-247.

10. Unless otherwise stated, this and all subsequent translations are mine, from the Spanish original version.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carlos Yebra López

Carlos Yebra López holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures from New York University, where he currently works as a Lecturer. His research focuses on the intersection between language and ideology, particularly as pertains to Muslim and Jewish communities in Contemporary Spain. His PhD dissertation is entitled Metaphors We Kill: A Critical Metaphor Analysis of Spanish Mass Press Discourse on Jihadist Terrorist Resistance (2004/2017).