Protest Cycles and Their Legacies: Analyzing the Effects of the Past in Spanish Contention during the Crisis

This paper studies the effects of historical legacies of various sorts on collective action through an analysis of contention during the crisis in Spain. The paper analyzes the impact of social movement and mobilizational traditions alongside the significance of political and institutional factors linked to the transition of the 1970s.  The paper takes up not only the legacies, both cultural and institutional, of the transition but also a number of dynamics and concerns that draw on social movement literature and debates.  The paper examines how activists identify social problems, organize and protest over time. Building upon major concepts in social movement studies, this paper analyses the evolution of the Spanish activist tradition in the post-transition era. Repertories of contention, but also organization structures and collective action frames are nationally inscribed in different traditions. These traditions are influenced by new norms and relations created during regime transition, but also by the previous experience of regime opposition and the earlier experiences of the pre-Franco labor movement. Thus a primary theme in the paper focuses on activist traditions developed in specific movement-organizational contexts and maintained through practice.   In the end of the paper, the institutional and movements’ legacies of the Spanish transition will be compared with other national experiences in Southern Europe (i.e., Portugal, Italy and Greece).