The European Union of Christian Democrats and the controversy regarding the Spanish accession to the EC in the 1970s. The human rights problem

This chapter focuses on how the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD), discussed human rights concerns in Spain during the democratic transition and at the inception of the adhesion process to the European Community. This contribution aims to reconstruct the complex action of the EUCD, which acted within the EC as an institutional actor and, at the same time, as an informal network of Catholic-inspired, anti-Francoist and pro-European movements. By highlighting the violation of human rights and the spread of political violence characterizing the Spanish political context during the 1970s, this chapter also takes into consideration the political-ideological magma of Spanish Catholicism, torn between a longing for renewal and a realpolitik keen to keep compromises with the Francoist ruling class seeking for international legitimacy. From this perspective, the analysis of this topic allows a critical reinterpretation of the ‘peaceful transition myth’ which has dominated the historiographical literature concerning Iberian democratization and European integration for a long time.