Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: personal networks, political strategies and the making of democracy
- PART I PERSONAL NETWORKS, POLITICAL TRADITIONS AND STATE POLICIES
- PART II SYNDICAL PRACTICES, SOCIAL STRUGGLES AND POLITICAL PROTESTS
- PART III POLITICAL PRACTICES, REPRESSION AND STRATEGIC RESPONSES
- 8 The revolutionary paradox: the changing political line of the Spanish Communist Party
- 9 A place in the struggle: personal networks and political practices in El Marco de Jerez
- 10 The other side of darkness: the repressive practices of the Franco regime
- 11 Contingent connections: the relationship between the workers' commissions and the Spanish Communist Party
- 12 Fighting with two faces: the strategic combination of legal and clandestine spaces
- PART IV POLITICAL STRATEGIES AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROJECT
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - A place in the struggle: personal networks and political practices in El Marco de Jerez
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: personal networks, political strategies and the making of democracy
- PART I PERSONAL NETWORKS, POLITICAL TRADITIONS AND STATE POLICIES
- PART II SYNDICAL PRACTICES, SOCIAL STRUGGLES AND POLITICAL PROTESTS
- PART III POLITICAL PRACTICES, REPRESSION AND STRATEGIC RESPONSES
- 8 The revolutionary paradox: the changing political line of the Spanish Communist Party
- 9 A place in the struggle: personal networks and political practices in El Marco de Jerez
- 10 The other side of darkness: the repressive practices of the Franco regime
- 11 Contingent connections: the relationship between the workers' commissions and the Spanish Communist Party
- 12 Fighting with two faces: the strategic combination of legal and clandestine spaces
- PART IV POLITICAL STRATEGIES AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROJECT
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I come from Pepe, and he asks to be remembered to you.
Anon.Throughout the rise of the independent working-class movement in Spain the Communist Party was the principal organization of the clandestine opposition. But while it is not difficult to learn of its political line as proclaimed by the propaganda apparatus in exile, trying to reconstruct the Party's political practice on the ground is quite another matter. In part this has to do with the dearth of documentation: time and again Party militants recalled that any incriminating piece of paper could make them liable for as many as twenty years in gaol. In part it is a question of the intrinsic characteristics of clandestine operations, which mean that even the most dedicated of the militants have a picture of the process which is always incomplete and sometimes simply incorrect. In short, if they only see a small part of the process, it is because they were struggling in the dark. So the task of recuperating the key moments and meetings which can provide points of historical reference for local political practices is a delicate and fascinating one, which moreover departs from the central premise that these practices were woven from the tenuous threads of the personal networks which brought the restless men of the opposition together.
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- Information
- Making Democracy in SpainGrass-Roots Struggle in the South, 1955–1975, pp. 154 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989