Spain's transition was peaceful due to a non-nuclear version of MAD: mutual assured destruction. The economic pillars of the Franco regime knew the political game was up if the economic game was to continue. Also, they had no choice but to risk by letting the democracy genie out of the bottle to keep the Catalan and Basque separatist genies in the bottle. The Franquista military leaders would accept democracy, but not separatism. They kept the separatist and military genies in the bottle by giving all regions limited autonomy. Dividet et imperam.

It was like the Italian novel and Visconti movie about revolution, The Leopard: "in order for things to remain the same, things will have to change."

I'm an American resident of Latvia. I'm learning Latvian to make it permanent. Many thanks for reading.