Agitated (Grupos Autónomos and Armed Anticapitalism in Spain, 1974-1984)

A cultural history of Spain’s dictatorship through the lens of the Grupos Autónomos, who opposed both the Franco regime and the new capitalist democracy. 

The Franco dictatorship in Spain was famously beset by armed revolutionary groups, inheritors of the legacy of Spanish anarchism that Franco had crushed. Less well-known are the Grupos Autónomos (Autonomous Groups) active during Spain’s transition to “democracy,” a transition set in motion and overseen by the powerful elites of the Franco regime and intended to maintain existing social and economic relations. As the country reorganized under a veneer of a parliamentary monarchy, resistance spread in the form of small autonomous bands of armed rebels who sought a more free and egalitarian future for Spain. Agitated is the tale of those groups. It brings alive the young people who comprised them, detailing their struggle against the faux democracy of authoritarian capitalism and the vibrant lives they lived: the counterculture they formed, their relations with workers, life underground, of course, the repression they suffered.