MAY 68

Students from Spain

GENERATION OF 68

The Generation of 68 was the protagonist of student revolts. A youth group calling for the liberation of women (when feminism emerged), equality of blacks or dignity of gays. A generation that changed culture and art. Music became an anthem, political issues entered the theatre, and pop art changed the idea that people had of art. Meanwhile, in politics, the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King or the popular uprisings against Soviet tanks during what the "Prague Spring" marked the thinking and acting of the Generation of 68.

THE CONTEXT OF 68 IN SPAIN

Spain still dominated by the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco, the student movement became booming since 1968.

The Spanish University was the only institution that no longer disturbed Franco. Its young, rebellious and idealistic character crystallized mainly in two key turns but the first, in 1956, wasn't a small skirmish in Madrid and Barcelona. Three great movements in Spain, specifically accused 68: the student movement, the new labor movement and the feminist movement.

DUE TO THE CONTEXT OF THIS TIME IN SPAIN

For Spanish people, May 68 was relatively distant.

But Franco's regime made a partial use of facts reflecting them only their appearance of anarchy,manner and form of the basic tenets of that brief revolution, at least for those who learned about it through the Spanish press, were ignored.

On May 1st, the Communist Party of Spain held a day of action. The demonstrations were the most impact posed as cultural events in solidarity with the workers' mobilizations, particularly Raimon 's concerts, which made possible the convocation.

68 AS SOCIAL AND GENERATION CHANGE

68 represented a later attack youth WWII that although they were receiving educational training with a much higher level than that of their parents, they didn'tf ind place in a society they saw as bad, full of conventions and in need of change.

Above all, 68 is accused of the crisis of traditional values of contemporary society, that after the passage of the pre-industrial society to industrial society or mass consumer society.

What began with a specific protest against a university reform ended with the occupation of developing theatres and several mass demonstrations in the streets of the city.

OTHER PROTESTS OF 68January: Closing of the School of Politics and Economics in Madrid, with sanction of loss of tuition for all students. In late January the University Police Order (POU) is created to occupy the campus.

March: police evicts the central building of the University of Santiago, where it was being celebrated a student assembly. An intense mobilization of Galician students.

December: student unions between sector union wants to keep the same model and others, under the influence of the French May, started to promote other forms of organization and struggles are divided.

GENERATIONAL SUCCESSION

As in other parts of the world, in Spain is also usually indicated the generational succession of 68 of young people who occupied managerial positions and political responsibility during the Spanish Transition by a generation of very different values : 'La movida madrileña', that was a counterculture movement.

OTHER MAY 68

May 68 has been replaced by successive representations; but also as its disruptive nature has survived in different ways to attempts to annihilation to forms of amnesia and social manipulation that have tried to cancel, sociologists who have explained and the former student leaders who have appropriated the monopoly of memory.

MUSIC IN SPAIN

A view of what was happening in other countries, Franco's regime observed closely the student riots.

The Songwriers became symbols because they allowed boost students' ideas. In Spain, the music was a vital media with hidden messages.

INTERPRETATION OF LEFT WING GROUPS

Left wing groups wanted to create a new political party but the obsession with creating the new party through all the policy initiatives and stifles any attempt to respond with new and imaginative transformations of capitalism, both economically, with the destruction of the welfare state, and at the political level, with the concentration of power in major political parties and the reduction of the representative space policy, falling far short of the radical, personal and collective transformation, 68 facts that had been raised.

THE EFFECTS OF 68 IN SPAIN

It can be said that the effect of 68 in Spain meant a strong radicalization of movements that were already underway, such as student and the labor movement, or aided the creation of new ones, such as the movement of feminists, but failed to link the fight against the dictatorship with the objective of "socialist" or "anti-capitalist" democracy.

Employers who throughout the decade 60's and early 70's, supported the crackdown and even, on occasion, asked for more repression against the leaders yet, shortly before the death of Franco, changed attitude and prepared to lead an orderly, negotiated transition and monarchy.

That echoes 68 and the idea of "68 cultural revolution" was found lost ground subscriber in contemporary Spain.