Asensio Robles
Research project
Uncharted Mediterranean: The end of the Southern European dictatorships at the intersection of decolonization, globalization and the Cold War (1956-1977).
Project summary
“Uncharted Mediterranean” sets out to offer a regional and global overview of the demise of the Greek, Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships in the mid-1970s. It centers on three interrelated questions: how did three distinct authoritarian regimes collapse within a span of nineteen months? Was this simultaneity a matter of coincidence, or the result of broader global forces? And how can this experience be situated within the wider transformations of the 1970s?
As a working hypothesis, the project argues that the Mediterranean played a pivotal role in the crisis of these regimes by drawing them into interrelated processes of decolonization, globalization, and Cold War détente. Through this lens, “Uncharted Mediterranean” seeks to illuminate not only the history of Southern Europe, but also the world (and the sea) around it. From the Middle East oil crisis and African decolonization to the rise of Eurocommunism, it presents the Mediterranean as a single unit of study by highlighting the interdependencies it created at a critical time of globalization.
Interweaving currents
A combination of geographical and thematic fragmentation has hindered scholars from examining Southern Europe’s democratic transitions from a Mediterranean perspective. Interdisciplinary studies of economic interdependence and North–South relations have placed the Middle East and the Arab oil-exporting countries at the heart of new globalization narratives. Yet, while the global economic influence of this topic is now well established, its regional reverberations across Southern Europe remain insufficiently explored.
Conversely, historians of Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece) have predominantly pursued internally driven or Western-centered interpretations of the 1970s. Although the role of economic forces is widely acknowledged, much of this scholarship has emphasized elite-driven political reform, grassroots mobilizations, Cold War constraints and European integration.
This project seeks to offer a fresh perspective by channeling these distinct currents into a unified narrative. Taking Southern European democratization as its focus and the Mediterranean as its setting, “Uncharted Mediterranean” explores how global disruptions and regional interdependencies interwove Southern European democratization, decolonization, and the Cold War together.
A tale of three shores
Exploring the interconnection between the global economy, the Mediterranean, and Southern Europe will be pursued through three main axes: East, South, and North.
The first section, “East”, begins on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. It provides a long-term overview of the process of economic decolonization, from the 1956 nationalization of the Suez Canal to the 1973 oil shock in the Middle East and the 1974 United Nations General Assembly’s declaration for a New International Economic Order. The focus then shifts to the impact of the global energy crisis on the economies of Greece, Portugal, and Spain at a moment of rising social unrest.
The second part, “South”, turns to the overseas conflicts of the three dictatorships between 1973 and 1975. It explores how growing labour and political mobilization in Greece, Portugal, and Spain intertwined with conflicts in Cyprus, Angola, and the Western Sahara. The analysis follows how these overseas tensions — with reverberations in Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and Turkey — combined with mounting economic distress at home to push the regimes to the brink of collapse.
The last part, “North”, ends with an overview of the northern Mediterranean between 1975 and 1976. It examines how Southern European democratization fuelled the growth of anti-NATO political movements in democratic Greece, Portugal, Spain, and how their experience helped to propel new political trends (Eurocommunism) in Italy and France. The project concludes in 1977, when the three Southern European transitions entered their phase of democratic consolidation and the momentum of Eurocommunism began to wane.
The Mediterranean at the hour of globalization
The benefits of fusing the literatures on decolonization, globalization, the Cold War and Southern European history are hard to overstate. It blurs the lines separating both scholarships, helping them to transcend thematic specialization and paving the way for cross-field fertilization. Moreover, by using the Mediterranean as a shared narrative anchor, it proposes new, uncharted spaces through which to study these topics and their relevance for the forging of our times.
Such an approach is all the more necessary in the light of today’s challenges. With the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, the fall of the Greek junta, and the death of General Francisco Franco, a new impetus has emerged to commemorate the Southern European transitions and their successful integration into the West. Perhaps not coincidentally, Western triumphalism flourishes as an ever-growing “Fortress Europe” discourse invokes the Mediterranean as a space of frontier, disconnection, and human tragedy.
That is not the view this project provides. By diving into the economic origins of the Southern European democratic transitions, “Uncharted Mediterranean” addresses a gap in the scholarly literature. Yet, more profoundly, it also speaks to public debates by showing how the Mediterranean has historically been a critical space of global and regional interaction – one without which even the story of European democratization cannot be fully understood.
Biography
Asensio Robles is a historian of globalization and the Cold War. He earned his PhD from the European University Institute in 2024, with a thesis on the 1970s economic crisis and its role in the collapse of the Franco regime and the emergence of international cooperation over democratic Spain. The revised manuscript of this dissertation is currently under contract with the University of North Carolina Press (InterConnections series).
Blending international history and political economy, his research has been supported by organisations such as the History and Political Economy Project (2024 Summer Research Grant), the Business History Conference (2024 Henry Kaufman Financial History Research Fellowship) and the Transatlantic Studies Association (2021 DC Watt Prize).
At Iméra, he will move beyond his expertise on Spain to launch a comparative study of 1970s Greece, Portugal, and Spain, as part of a broader new project. His work will focus on expanding the scope of his research through engagement with cutting-edge literature on economic decolonization and North–South relations
Robles is currently an adjunct professor at Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid, Spain, and serves as Editor-at-Large for the Toynbee Prize Foundation.
