Experts in Something and Experts in Everything: The Two Pillars of the Culture of the Transition

A less than democratic way to construct a democracy

His first name appears alone on the screen: just ‘José Luis,’ with no last name. He speaks in the first person plural, clearly differentiating we (‘we never managed to hear the conversations’) from they (‘they asked for coffee, they asked for water’). He narrates a scene of intrigue, one might almost say a secret meeting. The place: the Madrid restaurant that bears his name, ‘José Luis’; the time: the night bridging May 23 and 24, 1978. ‘It was here, in this booth,’ gravely intones the voice-over, while the camera pans between tables that still seem to exude power, ‘that Alfonso Guerra and Abril Martorell drafted and negotiated 25 key articles of the Constitution.’

Indeed, during five long hours that night, from 10 pm to 3 am, these two politicians, one from the PSOE and the other from the Unión de Centro Democrático, decided such fundamental things for the future of Spaniards as that their state would be defined as a ‘parliamentary monarchy,’ ‘secular,’ and composed of diverse ‘nationalities’; that their representatives would be chosen by means of an electoral law that distributed them across 45 provincial subdivisions—thus favoring the majority political parties; that their education would not take place in a single public lay school; and finally, that the Constitution that arranged all this would make it difficult for the citizens themselves to have any influence on that very document.

To be fair, it should be noted that Guerra and Martorell did not in fact personally decide these things; rather, they negotiated them for later approval by a commission of 37 representatives. The Basque Group and the Popular Alliance protested at not being invited to this particular nocturnal meeting, but it wouldn't have mattered in any case. The commission always voted in favor of what was negotiated by Guerra and Martorell and a few others who often met with them en petit comité outside the halls of congress, to negotiate the constitution of the nascent Spanish democracy.