The process of democratisation in Portugal and Spain originated from a similar socio-political context. Besides having an almost identical geographical context, two long authoritarian and military dictatorships shaped the two counties on the basis of a nationalist and deeply catholic identity. From the point of view of popular culture, both dictatorships promoted a disengaged culture, based on songs, football matches, bullfights and the stereotypes of Iberian folklore. In the early 1970s, the illiteracy rate and cultural practices indexes in both countries were still among the highest in Europe. Despite these similar starting conditions, the Portuguese transition to democracy was very different from that of Spain; whereas Portugal created a rupture with the previous institutional context through a military coup, in Spain the post-Franco democratisation was founded on negotiated reform. These two processes of transition to democracy in Portugal and Spain, although dissimilar from each other, led to new ways of both high and popular cultural expressions. As a result, the decade following the two dictatorships was characterised by significant and euphoric experiments in the fields of literature, visual and plastic arts, cinema and music. Scholars have paid scant attention to the ways in which artists thought and put into practice the very notion of democracy in these years. Democracy is a highly contested category, one that has been imagined in many different ways, and any particular realisation of which carries costs as well as benefits. According to the historian of democracy Pierre Rosanvallon (2008), the rise of a democracy entails both a promise and a problem for a society. This two-day conference aims to innovatively question how artistic practices and institutions formed ways of imagining democracy and by what means arts and culture participate in the wider social struggle to define freedom and equality for the post-Estado Novo and post-Francoist period: how did artistic practices instantiate ideas of democracy in this context? Inversely, how did such democratic values inform artistic practice? How did Portuguese and Spanish artists and intellectuals negotiate between creative autonomy and social responsibility? And more broadly, what is the role of culture in a democracy?

 

 

PROGRAMME

 

Thursday 28 November 

 

Venue: Heritage Quay

 

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9:30 – 9:45 Registration: Coffee, Tea and Pastries

 

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9:45 – 10:00 Opening Remarks

 

 

10:00 – 11:05 Opening Keynote Speech

 

Professor Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds): “Culture and the Spanish Transition”

 

 

11:05 – 11:15 Break

 

 

11:15 – 13:00 The Transition on Display: Audio-Visuals

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Patricia Oliveira (University of Lisbon): “Democratic Transition into Question: Documentary Film in the Iberian Context”

 

David Justice (Oklahoma State University): “D is for Democracy: Barrio Sésamo,U.S. Soft Power, and Spanish Identity”

 

Vicente Rodríguez Ortega (University Carlos III Madrid): “The Alcàsser Case: Memory, Democracy and the Media”

 

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13:00 – 13:45 Lunch 

 

13:45 – 15:30 Writing, Politics and Survival of Censorship

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Daniel Floquet (University of Porto): “Between Carnations: Political Writings of Maria Velho da Costa After 1974”

 

Ana Paula Ferreira (University of Minnesota): “Lídia Jorge’s Allegories of Democracy and Community”

 

Alícia Hernàndez Grande (Northwestern University): “The Transition on the (Judicial) Stage: Catalan Theatre, 1977-1978”

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15:30 – 15:50 Break 

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15:50 – 17:20 Music and Models of Democracy

 

Manuel Figueira (King’s College): “Leftism in the Portuguese Transition Through the Music of José Mario Branco and GAC”

 

Igor Contreras Zubillaga (University of Huddersfield): “Group Music-Making as an Alternative Democracy in Post-Francoist Spain”

 

Carlos van Tongeren (The University of Manchester): “Flamenco, Memory and Urban Practices in the Spanish Transition”

 

 

17:30 Drinks at Rhubarb (41/45 Queensgate)

 

 

18:45 Dinner at Café Mandalay

 

 

 

Friday 29 November 

 

Venue: Heritage Quay

 

 

9:15 – 9:30 Coffee, Tea and Pastries

 

9:30 – 10:50 Institutional Culture

 

Leonor de Oliveira (New University of Lisbon/The Courtauld Institute of Art): “Artistic and Institutional Forms in Post-Revolutionary Portugal: Artistic Agency and the Creation of a New Museum of Modern Art”

 

Lola Visglerio Gómez (Autonomous University of Madrid): “The Contemporary Art Museum of Seville: Contemporary Art, Citizenship and Democracy in the Last Years of Francoism”

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10:50 – 11:20 Break

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11: 20 – 12:40 Counterculture 

 

Carlos Martos Ferrer (University of Alicante): “A Vision of Culture from Below and Its Mechanisms of Opposition to the Francoism”

 

Mónica Granell Toledo (University of Valencia): “A (Counter) cultural Chronicle of the Transition to Democracy in Spain (Ajoblanco, 1974-1980)”

 

 

12:40 – 13:40: Lunch

 

 

13:40 – 15:00 Disenchantment 

 

Giulia Quaggio (University of Modena): “Democracy and Fear: The Case of the Anti-NATO Murals in Spanish Neighbourhood”

 

Daniel Sánchez Bataller (University of Illinois at Chicago): “Santiago Sierra’s Critical Realism and the Phantom of National Catholicism in Spain”

 

 

15.00 – 15:30 Break

 

 

15.30 – 16:40 Closing Keynote Speech 

 

Professor Antonio Costa Pinto (ICS-University of Lisbon): “Rethinking the Legacies of Transitions to Democracy in Portugal and Spain”

 

 

16:40 – 17:00 Final Discussion

 

 

17:00 Trip to The Sportsman Beerhouse (1 Saint John's Road)

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Programme with abstracts:

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