This book explores the making of democracy in Spain during the twenty long years before the death of Franco. The author seeks out the beginnings of democratic struggle at the grassroots of civil society, recounting the story of the countless unsung heroes who prepared the political terrain of this transition. The story suggests that it was social needs and economic demands that spawned individual discontent and political dissent, but that the struggle itself required continual political organization and calculation. The author explores the personal networks and political strategies that sustained the struggle, and reveals that their contribution to the making of democracy was often contradictory and always piecemeal. By continually connecting grassroots political activity at the local level to the national trajectory of organized democratic struggle, the author demonstrates in detail the popular contribution to democratic process in Franco's Spain.