Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain

This is a book about the role of culture in social change and the transition to democracy of post-Franco Spain. Since General Franco''s death in 1975 Spanish political life has seen an extraordinarily quiescent period of consensus unique in its own history. Laura Desfor Edles takes a distinctively culturalist approach to this strategy of consensus and institutionalization of democracy and uncovers the processes of symbolization and ritualization that characterize it.