Protest Diffusion in the Semi-Periphery:
Greece and Spain as Examples of an ‘alternative’ ’68

This paper tries to demonstrate the common experiences of Greek and Spanish students, concerning repression and suffering from authoritarianism in the past, in both the public and private sphere, and similar ways of self-representation in the present. The veneration or rejection of the Civil War generation led to the same sort of generational conflict and a frequent move against family background. Still, this background, be it social or political, was not to account for the creation of the movement, as a left-wing tradition could be a contributing factor but also an obstacle.

As far as the evolution of the movements is concerned, common trajectories are visible; an early generation influenced by tiersmondisme and the conceptualization of anti-dictatorial activities as a liberation struggle contrasted with a subsequent generation which distanced itself from the most violent groupings, condemning the glorification of violence, without, however, rejecting its utilitarian value. This transnational comparison brought functional similarities in mobilisation tactics and common experiences between these two different cases, such as the appearance of two figures that would be hegemonic in later years: the Spanish progre and the Greek koultouriaris. A-synchronic as it might have been, the lifting of censorship which was a major factor for the evolution of the movements, had the same impact: it provided a space for action and allowed for the import of similar intellectual stimuli as in France, Italy and Germany.

With ’68, a mimetic tendency was diffused among the students, in an attempt to re-enact the international protest movements. Finally, the influence of foreign and home-grown counter-culture, facilitated by the opening of the two regimes, led to greater political but also personal emancipation. The special student culture that was developed was marked not only by Greek and Spanish internal politics, but also by a strong international current of radical youth culture. Changes were not only to be seen in terms of aesthetics and intellectual currents but also in the norms of social behaviour. In addition, a certain mass consumerist youth culture was coupled with political engagement, thus bringing these students closer to the ‘Marx and Coca Cola’ model, even though most often protagonists reject this label with fury.   

It is not a given that the student movements in Greece and Spain took place because of the dictatorships or that without them the students would not have been radicalised as in the rest of the world. ‘Judging by what happened in France, Germany and Italy […] there would have been student troubles, with or without Franco’, or the Colonels. In other words, despite the fact that the repressive regimes reinforced activism it was not they that generated it, but it was part of a whole era, which a priori regarded the students as its spearhead. The student movements which developed in Greece and Spain in the late 1960s and early 1970s did not only constitute a reaction against the pressure of a military dictatorship, but were also widely determined by the general wave generated in 1968. As an old Principal of the University of Madrid pointed out in 1968, the ever stronger contact with the international element, in fact with el mundo llamado ‘occidental’, was a key factor concerning student radicalisation. However, the geographical proximity and the working-class participation brings Spain closer and more in tune with international developments and the movements which emerged in the Western world. In addition, Spanish students were bolder than the Greeks in their criticism, even though they were born under Franco, without ever experiencing anything else. The fact that major intellectual figures who used to boost the regime sided with them, was a catalysing factor for their subversive turn.

Nevertheless, it was the response of the authoritarian regimes that deepened the crises and reinforced the students’ combativeness and coherence. It further conveyed the conviction that this was a battle of life and death, as was the case in Mexico, Thailand and Prague. Moreover, it was the student movements, bearers of the message and radicalism of the international protest movement that discredited the respective attempts of the regimes to liberalize from within. The processes of controlled liberalization although they took place at different times - late-1960s Spain and post-1970 Greece - had similar traits, both in terms of intentionality as well as of incoherence in which cultural politics were applied by the dictators. The respective openings failed miserably because apart from helping to ‘educate’ a new generation of students, these small concessions led to demands for still greater freedom of information, political pluralism and democratization. This complex web of references ‘interpellated’ the students, to use Althusser’s phrase and to paraphrase Delgado, ‘through the social practices in which they engage[d] into an ideology which they actively […] promote[d]’. Both movements developed common traits: they were inspired by the parallel experiences of international incitement to protest and became a major source of pressure on the respective regimes.

Konstantinos Kornetis was born in 1975 in Salonica, Greece. He received an M.A. with Distinction in the History of Southeastern Europe from University College London in 2000, after having studied History and Political Science at the Ludwig Maximilian's University in Munich, and War Studies and Modern Greek History at King's College London. He spent periods of research in France [Sorbonne/EHESS] and Spain [Salvador de Madariaga scholarship] and he was Visiting Global Scholar at the N.Y.U. in 2001. He received his PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute, Florence, in 2006 for a thesis entitled 'Student Resistance to the Greek Military Dictatorship: Subjectivity, Memory and Cultural Politics, 1967- 74'.

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