The year of 1974 was a breaking moment in the history of democratization, with the end of authoritarian regimes in Portugal and Greece, to which the beginning of transition in Spain followed in 1975.

Portugal democratization started with a pacific coup-d’etat on the 25th of April, immediately followed by an intense period of social mobilization remembered as Processo Revolucionário em Curso (PREC, Revolutionary Process Underway). The country passed through a phase of deep political ‘experimentation’ and ‘innovation’, which involved the most different arenas of the society, with occupation of lands, factories and media; the nationalization of banks and enterprises; the development of innovative participatory processes in spheres such as urban planning and architecture, or education and arts. These experiences were also sustained by a longer process of construction of democratic practices taking place during the last years of the regime and that was characterized by an increasing mobilization of Portuguese society and the pluralization of the contentious actors engaged against the regime. Students and in general the youth were at the forefront of this process of democratic learning, which – after the coup-d’état – converged with the emerging large movements contributing to boosting them.

Students and the youth were also crucial in Greece, where the students proved instrumental for discrediting the regime’s attempt to liberalize from within. The Polytechnic revolt in November 1973 might not have achieved the overthrow of the Colonels’ dictatorship, which was succeeded by an even more hard-line, albeit short-lived Junta, but it prevented a ‘continuity within change’ scenario for the Greek regime. The cultural and political resistances of that time informed much of the transitional dynamics of 1974, leading to the gradual consolidation of democracy after the regime’s final downfall in July of the some year. While the transition in Greece was due to a regime collapse triggered by the dramatic events in Cyprus that led to the Turkish invasion and the eventuality of armed conflict between the two countries over the island, a parallel transition ‘from below’ was receiving a great push from the pedigree of the resistance years.

We take the opportunity of the 50th anniversary of these events to re-discuss three books published by Berghahn, focusing on the final phase of the dictatorships in Portugal and Greece, as well as the initial period of the transition from dictatorship to democracy, from the perspective of the student political, social and cultural resistance.

We believe that this is a great opportunity to discuss issues such as the processes of failed liberalization of the dictatorships, the importance of cultural and political resistances, and democratization, introducing a comparison between the two cases which marked the beginning of what Samuel Huntington famously called “third wave of democratization”.