Abstract

GROVES, Tamar  and  RODRIGUEZ, Inmaculada Pedrera. THE PRESS AND THE PARTICIPATION OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN THE DEMOCRATIC NEGOTIATION IN SPAIN (1978-1982). Hist. Educ. [online]. 2018, vol.22, n.54, pp.91-112. ISSN 2236-3459 .  https://doi.org/10.1590/2236-3459/76998.

In this article we study the students’ movement which played an important role during the late Franco period and the transition to democracy in Spain. We focus our analysis on its return to action in the late 1970s, when it participated in the social negotiations of the first educational policies of the recently established democracy. We look at the struggle of the movement against the draft of the Law of the Autonomy of the University (Proyecto de Ley de Autonomía Universitaria), advanced by the government led by the UCD, the Union of the Democratic Centre party. This struggle was part of a much wider effort to influence the configuration of the young Spanish Democracy. In order to do this, we look at the press coverage of the struggle as it appeared in one of the leading newspapers of the time, El País. This newspaper is considered as The Newspaper of the period of the transition as it actively supported the process, and eventually was identified with the democratization of the country after the death of the dictator, General Franco. This analysis permits us to reconstruct the social image of the students’ movement in this historical moment, as one of the social actors which fought for changing the University as part of democratizing the country and recuperating basic civil rights, once the dictatorial period was over. As we show, the opposition to the law, was more related to this political and social struggle than to the actual educational content of the proposed reform. In addition we look at how, as the process of political negotiation advanced, the democratic and educational agenda of the students’ movement was mainly left behind.

Keywords : students’ movementes; spanish transition to democracy; university autonomy; El País.

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