Dialectics of Tradition. Political Transition and Democratic Culture

Abstract

The process of creating tradition, understood as a social phenomena towards the construction of a cultural heritage, is viewed in this contribution from the perspective of the study of the development of democratic culture in the historical period which takes the Spanish transition to democracy as a reference point. These considerations are based on a previous investigation and documentation carried out with an oral history methodology by cinematographic means, and consistent with the collection of over hundred testimonies throughout the Spanish geography in the period of 2012-17. These life stories belong to people who actively participated in, or were deeply affected by, the political facts occurring in Spain during the period of 1969 to 1982. Considerations about social-political aspects related to oral history, image, mythology and ideology are fundamental in interpreting these discussions. It can be inferred from this double work, both field  and theoretical, that democractic culture and tradition of societies can be described best as a dialectical process shaped by the economic and power interests of the social groups which form that collectivity, a process in which ideological factors associated with memory and oblivion, play a first order role.