After decades of relative isolation under an authoritarian regime the success of the democratic transition process in Portugal and Spain paved the way for the countries' full integration in the international community and for full membership in the European Community. For Portugal and Spain this momentous and long awaited development had profound consequences and set in motion complex processes of adjustment. The proposed workshop will commemorate this event and reflect on what has happened to Portugal and Spain in the last four decades. Following the conference's theme of "resurrections" this panel seeks to examine what elemenst of Southern European's past, and present are amendable to reanimation, focusing on three particular dymensions: political elites, the politics of historical memory, and institutional change.