The left wing in the nineteen seventies

Abstract

During the first half of the seventies, there was intense social mobilisation in which the Spanish communist party, the PCE managed to consolidate its leadership. In political terms, the break with the past that democracy would bring formed part of the left wing agenda. However, the break did not roll out as expected. The elections on 15th June 1977 marked the beginning of the process to draw up a new constitution, a process in which the left-wing played a vital role. The January elections also established a new balance of power in which the socialist party, the PSOE, became the majority left-wing party. Having shed its revolutionary rhetoric after its watershed 28th congress, it was now poised to take over the government when the next elections allowed it to do so. But the PCE, after realising that its high profile in society and its capacity to get people out on to the streets was not reflected in its number of parliamentary seats, went into a nosedive, with internal tensions leading to a spectacular degree of self destruction in 1981.