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

Abstract

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.