The political system established in 1939 by Francisco Franco was, along with the Salazar regime in neighboring Portugal, one of the longest-lasting dictatorships in Western Europe. It was the quintessential "authoritarian" regime (Linz 1975), characterized by limited and non-responsible political pluralism, political demobilization, a leader who exercised power within formally undefined but clearly recognizable limits, and the absence of an elaborated ideology. While these regime characteristics remained more or less constant, an overview of four decades of franquismo must make note of four distinct periods. From the victory in the civil war in 1939 until the mid 1940s, its totalitarian aspirations, its association with Hitler and Mussolini, and the recency of the war led to harsh repression, the presence of military officials among its governing elite, and efforts to establish a powerful quasi-fascist party. The regime during the 1950s was quite different: totalitarian aspira!

tions abandoned, the party and its ideology were progressively watered down; and international isolation, stark poverty and an attempt to implement an autarchic economic development strategy ha

ost all of them from rich democracies, exposed many Spaniards to the values of democracy, provided many of them with models for emulation, and destroyed the credibility of the regime's anachronistic propaganda. All of these factors exposed Spaniards to flows of information that were either internally inconsistent, or simply did not fit with easily observable reality.

The most significant impact of the 1966 Press Law involved the quality of reporting on political news. A certain ideological differentiation was allowed among private-sector periodicals, particularly magazines, stimulating a rise in their modest levels of circulation5. Public confidence in the press increased significantly: between 1960 and 1973, the share of Spaniards polled in surveys who expressed confidence in the press rose from 33 percent to 47 percent, while those expressing attitudes of distrust fell from 65 percent of those surveyed to 30 percent (IOP 1975a, 305). State-run publications, however, which remained subject to strict government vigilance and rigorous political control, did not evolve in this manner. As a result of their continuing monotony and lack of credibility, their circulations declined precipitously in the mid 1970s (Montabes 1989, 38 and 46).

Throughout the franquist era, radio coverage of politically relevant developments was subjected to severe restrictions. Although the practice of prior censorship was phased out, private radio networks were prohibited from broadcasting their own news programs until after Franco's death and the onset of the democratic transition. Spaniards thus had no alternative but to receive the news through the official broadcasts of RNE. And in describing those broadcasts, Gonzalez Seara writes:

ian regime precluded the development of a diversity of ideological or political orientations. These newspapers could only differ from one another with regard to secondary or marginal issues, always within the overall framework of continued support for the regime. Accordingly, in a 1964 survey3, 49 percent of newspaper readers in Madrid thought that all newspapers had the same political orientation, and 65 percent claimed not to believe the news they read (IOP 1965b, 196).

THE MEDIA AND AUTHORITARIANISM: AN ASSESSMENT

In the absence of survey data from the 1960s which would provide direct evidence concerning the linkage between media exposure and basic attitudes towards politics, a comparison between the passive majority and those minority sectors of Spanish society that were active in opposition suggests that the nature of this relationship is interactive with other social and political determinants of mass behavior. Beginning in 1956, but especially in the 1960s, workers in certain parts of Spain and university students would occasionally mount protest demonstrations. These were especially frequent and massive in the late 1960s. Maravall's excellent study (1978) of political activists in the late 1960s revealed that, although workers and students occupied very different positions in Spain's stratification system, they shared one attribute: they were immersed in sub-cultures which exposed individuals to information and values incompatible with the official doctrines of the regime, and whic!

Radio and Television: Continuing News Monopoly

The most decisive steps towards press liberalization were taken by Manual Fraga Iribarne, who assumed responsibility for regulation of the communications media in 1962. At first, Fraga merely relaxed the most repressive aspects of censorship and the issuance of "orders", but left the Press Law of 1938 unreformed. These modest steps made possible a certain intellectual liberalization within university circles which subsequently spread to the print media.

The Press Law Of 1966: Controlled Liberalization

The scope and pace of fundamental changes in political orientations of Spain's citizenry are impressive, and challenge some common notions about political socialization. Ra

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