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16 IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2003     

The Juan Linz Archive of the Spanish Transition 
to Democracy 1975-1983: A PROJECT OF ANALYSIS, 

DIGITALIZATION AND EVENT HISTORY DATABASE 

By Martha Peach*

Under the directorship of Almudena Knecht, 
the Library of the Centre for Advanced 
Studies in the Social Sciences of the Juan 
March Institute is constructing a digital 
archive of some 65,000 articles from eleven 
Spanish newspapers that mirrors Spainʼs 
transition to democracy.  

Spainʼs transition to democracy is one of 
the most cited cases of a successful and 
peaceful regime change of the twentieth century.  It is a 
model studied and admired by the international community 
and imitated by a large number of countries in their own 
political reform process.  The central object of this project 
is to provide a unique tool for the study of transitions to 
democracy, using as an example the Spanish case through 
the clipping archive selected and organized by Professor 
Juan Linz.

Professor Juan Linz, professor emeritus of Yale University, 
has donated his personal archive of press clippings from 
1975 to the early ʻ80s from twelve Spanish newspapers, to 
the Library of the Centre of Advanced Studies in the Social 
Sciences of the Juan March Institute of Madrid.  The fact 
that Professor Linz selected the articles gives the archive a 
mark of scholarly quality, which makes it a major research 
tool for students and practitioners of democratic transitions.  
Professor Linzʼs reputation as a scholar on transitions and 
as a mentor to hundreds of other scholars is well known.  
While his reputation encompasses studies beyond Spainʼs 
boarders, his studies and publications on Spain started in 
the ʻ60s while Spain was still under the Francoist regime 
and continue to the present.  Professor Linzʼs own words 
(1987) validate the importance of the project  “… the years 
after the death of Franco were of uncertainty, ambivalence 
and risk.  Neither political structure, nor any political model 
are sufficient to explain such a process without reference 
to the political actors that made the day by day decisions, 
confronting unexpected crisis that could have derailed 
the transition in spite of the well conceived and planned 
policies and procedures.”  This archive provides that ideal 
looking glass that reflects the dynamic and multi-faceted 
construction we call a “democratic transition”.

The archive of over 60,000 articles is in such a delicate 
condition that the needs for its preservation conflicts 
directly with the corresponding need to make the archive 

available to researchers and students of 
transitions to democracy.  The archive 
reflects the transition by covering 
every aspect of daily events, actors, 
public reactions, and the evolving 
network of decisions that brought 
Spain to a successful democratic 
transition.  Using current technology 
the archive will be preserved and will 
be freely available on the Internet in 

the Centreʼs web page (www.march.es) with searching 
capability by a multitude of identifiers as well as full 
text searching.  The articles will also be viewable and 
downloadable as a graphic image and they will be available 
as a text file.

Since we did not want to provide just a meta-data catalogue 
of the archive but rather provide a virtual archive with 
a catalogue and with enhanced searching and retrieval 
capabilities, we decided to include some new elements into 
the “tool box” of the archiveʼs user interface.   The most 
innovative element is the ability to use normalized fields 
as variables and thereby construct databases for event data 
analysis using SPSS or other statistical software.  The 
normalized fields include register number of the article, 
author, name of newspaper, page, article length (represented 
by number of paragraphs), source of information (for 
example, government source, politician, church, etc.), date, 
descriptors, type of article (editorial, news, etc.), existence 
and type of graphic illustrations.  Therefore a researcher 
wanting to do an analysis of newspaper coverage of a topic 
such as abortion could download the metadata of all articles 
that included the descriptor (or even the word “abortion”, 
since there will be full text searching capabilities), then 
load the meta data into a data analysis program.  By doing 
cross tab or other type of analysis the researcher would 
be able to do an analysis of volume of articles by date 
element or by newspaper or by type of article or by source 
of information used by the author of the article, etc.  It is 
hoped that the researcher would also be able to click on the 
register number to retrieve the digital image or the text file, 
to enable confirmation of variables etc.  

The project involves the development of five elements: a 
database registering each article, a thesaurus of descriptors, 
a graphic image archive, a text archive, searching 
screens with download, secondary analysis and printing 



  IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2003              17

capabilities.  The major design work has been done with 
the collaboration of librarians, scholars, and computer 
technicians.  The document analysis is being done by 
a team of research assistants with degrees in political 
science, contemporary history and library science.  The 
digitalisation will be contracted out to a firm specializing in 
document processing.  Librarians and computer technicians 
have developed the search and display software.  

The final result of the project will enable scholars 
throughout the world to follow the Spanish transition, 
accessing primary documents as events unfold, see the 
succession of events as decisions were made, and construct 
statistical analysis of trends.  Theories and models of 
the Spanish transition can be exposed as never before to 
the documental reality of the events as they happened.  
Historical memory can be juxtaposed against events as 
reported by the Spanish press.  Textual analysis that can 
illuminate the role and behaviour of the press will be 
facilitated by the archive.  The project will be a model 
for archives of other transitions and political events.  And 
lastly, the software, thesaurus and procedures employed by 
the project can easily be transferred for use by projects of 
similar purpose.  Thanks to advances in telecommunication 
technology, the projectʼs importance also incorporates 
several innovations in digital archives.  These innovations 
respond to researchers  ̓needs both for qualitative analysis 
as well as macro statistical analysis of trends, patterns and 
agenda setting reflected in the Spanish press during the 
transition.    

The Project to date has received more than 150,000 € in 
grants from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and 
Sports and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology 
and the Community of Madrid.  The Juan March Institute 
has supported the project with computer equipment, 
computer support and the librarians of the Institute have 
been directing the design and processing elements of the 
Project.  Scholars associated with the Institute have assisted 
in the design of the project as well as helping search for 
funding.  The European Program Leonardo has provided 
two researchers for five months each.  The Library Schools 
of SEDIC, Carlos III of Madrid and the Complutense 
University has provided other researchers.

The design work and the infrastructure of the project are 
open ended in that it can be applied to other archives.  It is 
hoped that the project will generate spin-off projects that 
will expand the coverage of the Spanish transition as seen 
in the press of other countries as well as reflected in other 
archives of interviews, personal archives of people of the 
transition, etc.  Much of the design work is also applicable 
for treatment of similar archives of other regime transitions.  

The final goal of the project is to offer to the international 
research community an Internet archive and user interface 
that will enable studies heretofore possible only with 

great expense of time and effort and will be a tool to test 
existing hypothesis and conclusions concerning democratic 
transitions as well as possibly generating new avenues of 
research.

Reference
Juan Linz.  1987.  “Innovative Leadership in the Transition 
to Democracy and a New Democracy: The Case of Spain.”  
Draft paper prepared for discussion at the Conference on 
“Innovative Leadership and International Politics” of the 
Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, Hebrew 
University, Jerusalem, June 8-10, 1987.  pp. 1-2.

* Martha Peach, Director of the Library, Centre for 
Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Juan March 
Institute, Madrid, Spain, Peach@ceacs.march.es

mailto:Peach@ceacs.march.es