SPAIN: A Vote for Democracy

A year after Francisco Franco's death, the rubber-stamp parliament in Madrid moved Spain along the road to democracy in a curious way—by voting itself out of existence. After three days of sometimes emotional debate, the Cortes overwhelmingly approved (425 to 59, with 13 abstentions) the government's political reform bill (TIME, Nov. 1), thereby promising Spain a Western-style democracy for the first time in 40 years. Under the provisions of the law, a bicameral legislature (a 350-member elected congress of deputies and a 207-member senate) will replace the present Cortes, in which less than one-fifth of the Deputies are popularly elected....

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