Weaknesses of Spanish Catholicism prior to the II Vatican Council

Abstract

The decline of the social presence of the Spanish Church has provoked all kinds of explanations. Many questions appear connected with that evolution towards a secondary or even irrelevant social role of a traditional institution. Explanations coming from conservative spaces have insisted on the weakening generated by the approaches to liberalism, or to the secularist left. In the years after the Vatican Council the idea of a provoked crisis arose: the recent event was destroying a previous and always brilliant Catholicism. The reality is more complex. In fact, the allegedly brilliant previous situation was frequently an idealization of the true story. Thus, a revision of the situations before the Council is necessary.