The Antimilitarist Campaign against Compulsory Military Service in Spain during the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

The present article focuses on the political and social influence of the antimilitarist movement in Spain during the 1970s and 1980s. The article shows how throughout the 1970s the issue of conscientious objection became part of a wider context of struggle for the individual and collective rights and freedoms the Francoist dictatorship denied the Spanish population, achieving an important political impact by concentrating its action on Spain's external image. Throughout the following decade, the antimilitarist movement grew within a context of large-scale mobilisations and public debate around pacifism and antimilitarism, on the occasion of the referendum on Spain's permanence in NATO. The most important campaign was that of resistance both to military service and the alternative social service, the so-called insumisión.