Workers’ mobilisations during the Spanish democratic transition: discourse and representations of assemblyism (1976–1978)

Abstract

The following work analyses trade union and journalistic discourses on the role played by worker’s assemblies during the Spanish transitional process with the aim of understanding how their mobilisation was subjugated and subordinated by political organisations and trade unions who were in opposition to democratisation. The worker’s assemblies were not anecdotal events, and the marginalisation of their meetings was partly the consequence of public discourses that delegitimised them. Moreover, these discourses contributed to the construction of a specific political culture which rejects worker ‘radicalism’. Thus, workers were asked to reject their own democratic structures and accept the monopoly of social representation by the trade unions.