ABSTRACT
Spain’s accession to the European Community on 1 January 1986 was celebrated as the end of the country’s ‘exceptionalism’. Integration into the EC (EU since 1992) had important domestic consequences such as the modernisation of the political and economic system and gradual convergence with European standards of living thanks to the redistributive effects of the Structural and Cohesion funds.1 The multiple benefi ts of Europeanisation turned Spain into a staunch supporter of ‘widening’ and ‘deepening’ the integration project and its political elites came to equate national interests with European interests. As Carlos Closa and Paul Heywood (2004) have argued, the prospect of membership of the European club had been a key catalyst for democratisation and its fi nal accession completed the ‘national project’ of political and economic modernisation which had begun after the death of Franco. When, in 1986, the accession treaty and the Single European Act (SEA) came into force the state-funded ‘dirty war’ was still ongoing. The following year the GAL disbanded and the fi rst anti-ETA pact was signed in the Spanish parliament. With the end of the death squads the authoritarian methods disappeared and a new counter-terrorist strategy was launched.
