CEDI: transición y crisis de un movimiento europeísta, 1970-1980

• Main Author: Antonio Cañellas Mas
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Casa de Velázquez 2017-11-01
• Series: Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez
• Subjects: confederation; conservative; Europe; Christian identity; reform; political transition
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/mcv/7872

The European Centre for Documentation and Information (CEDI) was established in 1952 as an international association to promote European unity, pursuing a Christian, confederative interpretation that would allow the Franco regime a place in the Common Market. During the 1970s the CEDI underwent some changes in response to transformations in Spanish politics and the EEC. As an organisation created to promote the interests of Francoist diplomacy in Europe and supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, its strategies and methods of action fitted ill with the new lines drawn up by the government once the transition began in 1975. In these attempts to adapt to the changing circumstances of the Spanish and European situation, the CEDI sought to maintain its presence and influence political decision-making as far as possible. However, its conservative discourse—so closely linked to the Franco regime—was such that for many leaders of the new parliamentary democracy, it had to go, absent the official support that it had hitherto relied on.