There is no more important topic in political science than democracy and no global issue more pressing than the struggle for democracy. Only a small minority of the world's population presently enjoys the individual rights and civil liberties characteristic of liberal democratic regimes. The great majority of people still live under more arbitrary and dangerous forms of government. More than anything else it is the struggle for democracy which will most directly determine their life chances and those of their children.

This book is about the struggle for democracy in Spain. Its main premise is that democracy can only be achieved and can never be conferred. In short, whoever wants democracy must fight for it. But democracy is only rarely the original goal of democratic struggle. For the greater part of most such struggles the demands are more limited and direct. Yet it is in pressing for the resolution of immediate problems, in seeking just solutions, that people become democratic actors and so achieve their citizenship. The guiding principle of my research, therefore, is that it makes little sense to talk of ‘making democracy’ without talking of the people who make it.

All social science tells a story. Some of its stories are more compelling and coherent than others, but they are still stories.