Creating a culture of interrelations: Europeanisation processes at the University of Valladolid,c. 1982–1988

Abstract

The article examines Europeanisation processes at the Spanish University of Valladolid (UVa) in the years around Spain’s adhesion to the European Communities in 1986. This event has often been seen as key to the Spanish transition to democracy, which had begun after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. Drawing on a variety of source materials, the article shows that Europeanisation at the UVa involved many different actors and manifested itself in several different ways: as part of a more general discourse on the need for an open, democratic university; in the form of collaboration and mobility agreements with foreign universities and in the activities and knowledge production of new research centres and student associations. I thus argue that Europeanisation at the UVa began prior to rather than with Spain joining the EC – indeed, some of the cited examples were rooted in contacts and practices established decades earlier. Furthermore, I identify several different driving forces behind Europeanisation. Notions of European integration and collaboration as an economic necessity, both on a global and local level, did not exclude notions of Europe as a cultural and historical project. Rather, these different concepts of Europe and Europeanisation were intertwined and mutually reinforcing.