This book brings together recent research by a group of specialists in history and sociology to provide a new reading of the late Franco dictatorship, especially in relation to its political culture. The authors focus on the election of local, trade union and national representatives, the work of the first Spanish sociologists, the struggle over administrative reform, the role of the media and the intellectuals, as well as the evolution of the dictatorships political class and its response to the regimes decline. Not only are the politics of the late dictatorship scrutinised, but also the mechanisms that were deployed to control the fast-changing society of the 1960s and 1970s. In examining the late Franco period, the contributors do not believe that it contained the seeds of Spains later democratisation, but maintain that certain sectorial regime initiatives -- electoral and political changes, an evolving discourse and an interest in political processes outside Spain -- made many Spaniards aware of