Democratic Quality Indicators in the Leaders'' Discourses during the Spanish Transitions: Second Republic (1930''s) and Democratic Transition (1970''s)

During the XXth century, there have been in Spain at least two attempts of consolidating a democratic regime. The first experience was the Second Republic, from 1931 to 1939, which was frustrated by several circumstances, especially the civil war. The second one was the transition to the parliamentary monarchy, initiated in 1975 after more than three decades of Francoist dictatorship, which finally proved to be successful. Following Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino (2004), one of the most important elements of a democratic regime is the rule of law. In order to achieve such element, it is said to be necessary the spread within the population of the liberal and democratic values, a situation that can be possible thanks to the discourses of the main political leaders. The objective of the present research work is to prove the existence of those political discourses during the aforementioned historic periods. According to this, we will examine the discourses made by Manuel Azaña, Niceto Alcalá Zamora and Alejandro Lerroux, three of the most relevant politicians of the Second Republic; and the ones made by Adolfo Suárez, Felipe González and Santiago Carrillo, decisive leaders during the 1970’s. We have chosen these cases regarding the fact that they represent a sample of the ideological diversity of both periods. Moreover, these leaders can be considered innovators, as they contributed to establish the respective political regimes. The results of our analysis should allow us to assess the role played by the selected discourses in the spread of democratic and liberal values and, as a consequence, in the fate of each democratization process.