Berkley Center

Earlier this week, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was sworn in as prime minister, his election confirmed by the Senate after his party, the Socialist Workers Party of Spain, emerged victorious in the March 11 elections. At the formal swearing-in ceremony, he had a chance to be sworn in on either the Bible or the Spanish Constitution—he chose the Constitution, placing his right hand on the document and pledging to dutifully undertake the privileges and obligations of office. What a difference 30 years make; this scene would have been impossible under Franco.

While many things have changed during the 33 years since the death of Franco, the removal of religion from the public sphere is perhaps one of the most easily recognizable. During the early Franco years, clergy held important posts in the Spanish government. Technocrats from Opus Dei are credited with much of the economic modernization that Spain achieved from the late 1950’s through the end of the 1960’s;– their combination of economic liberalism and social conservatism certainly left an indelible mark on Spanish society.

As I attempted to show in my first letter from Spain, the private practice of organized religion has been on the decline for many years in Spain. Thus, in this letter, I’'d like to show how it is now received in the public sphere.

A major turning point in the history of the Spanish Catholic Church coincided with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Almost immediately thereafter, the Church began to cautiously criticize the human rights abuses of Franco'’s regime. In 1971, the Joint Assembly of Bishops and Priests asked for forgiveness for the Church’'s ideological support of the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Further, the general Church leadership supported the transition to democracy that occurred after Franco'’s death. In the ensuing Spanish Constitution of 1978, the important role of the Church in Spain was recognized, but the document formally enshrined the separation of church and state.

More recently, while the Church has lost popular support, it has still been called upon to help mediate peaceful solutions. During the government of José María Aznar in the 1990’s, a Spanish bishop was called upon to broker a lasting peace between the state and ETA. However, throughout Zapatero’'s current government, the Church has grown increasingly estranged from the State. Church leaders have angrily opposed the social reforms introduced by the government since 2004, including the relaxing of divorce laws, the legalization of gay marriage, the removal of religious classes from the national school curriculum, and the passing of the historical memory law, in which the Socialists attempted to redress the grievances of Franco's victims. These rebuffs to the ideals of the Church prompted a statement to be released by Church leadership in February 2008 just before the most recent elections. The statement implicitly called upon Spanish Catholics to reject Zapatero'’s re-election hopes and vote for the more conservative Partido Popular.

Of course, it didn'’t matter: it was Zapatero, and not a representative of the Partido Popular, being sworn in last week on the Spanish Constitution.