The Anti-Cold War Left: Third World Imaginaries and Protest Cultures at the Local Level in Spain, 1968–1986

Abstract

This article contributes to recent scholarly efforts to reassess the history of Third-Worldism in Europe during the Cold War. Focusing on left-wing activists who mobilized through and beyond the long 1960s in the Spanish city of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, the article demonstrates how local communities drew meaning from and projected meaning onto the Third World to help them understand domestic conditions under the Francoist dictatorship, find common ground during the transition to democracy, and carve out a new role for Spanish democracy on European and global stages based on the collective values of non-alignment, participation, Third-World optimism and solidarity.