WHEN I WAS INVITED BY GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION TO contribute a memoir on my intellectual autobiography to its fifteenth anniversary number, it struck me that the most appropriate subject for me to treat was the nature of the change affecting my own discipline – sociology – during the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
For some years now Spanish university students have been drawing attention to themselves by their political activity in a regime in which political activity is not legal. The conflict has since 1962 taken the form of a demand by the students to set up an autonomous Students Union in the place of the officially sponsored SEU (Sindicato Espaiiol Universitario). A new wave of student disturbances occurred in the winter of 1965, sparked off by the exclusion of a student who had attended a meeting of students who refused to join in the activities of the official union in January 1965. The students throughout the country began to demand autonomy, both for the rectors of the universities and for the students' union, and supported demands by workers on 27 January who were also demonstrating in favour of free trade unions. On 6 February demonstrations took place again in Madrid and Barcelona, and a number of arrests were made. Further demonstrations of students against the obligatory SEU took place on 12 February in both cities. A number of students were beaten-up and arrested in Madrid; in Barcelona 1000 students met in the Faculty of Law, with the permission of the dean. Faculties in Bilbao and Madrid were closed for a while by the authorities, but the students continued to hold unofficial assemblies at which they demanded 'free unions', and refused to cooperate with representatives of the official union. On 19 February some 2000 students in Madrid demonstrated in favour of university autonomy, and carried on with their protest for three days.
