July 1974 was the watershed of Greece’s twentieth century. It marked the sudden end of the post-Civil War political order and the return of parliamentary democracy. Hereafter, all Greeks could exercise their political rights freely. Dissidents no longer feared persecution, the Left operated in daylight, and elections were held without fear of intimidation. A new era had dawned. It was later dubbed ‘the Metapolitefsi’, which denoted regime change and political transformation, implying a general acceptance of the legitimacy of democratic institutions. This had to do with the catastrophic failures of the Junta and with the consolidation of democracy internationally. By the mid-1970s, when Spain, Portugal and Greece emerged from authoritarian rule, the pathway to a democratic future had already been marked out by other Western European countries. That political transformation was to be complemented by changes in society that were just as significant. The next ten years for Greece witnessed extraordinary cultural and social ferment, as citizens used their freedoms to remake their lives and develop new identities. The Metapolitefsi began with an explosion of mostly peaceful but energetic grass-roots activism. It was dominated by a spirit of collectivism and featured progressive changes to family, gender, sexual and religious authority. In a sense, the Greek ‘1960s’ were in full swing in the mid-1970s.

By 1985, however, Greeks were following other Europeans along a different path. They were now more focused on consumerism and private interests. By then, most governments were seeking to shrink the state and promote market deregulation. This was the new world that was increasingly dominated by neoliberalism, and by accelerating globalisation driven by new technologies such as the personal computer and the World Wide Web (Berend 2010: 167–8).

In such ways, the 1980s gave birth to the present. By the end of the decade, Greece was fast becoming the society that we recognise today. It was also the decade in which the seeds of the political and economic crises of the early twenty-first century were planted.

Southern Europe in context

The Greek dictatorship ended at roughly the same time as its much older Spanish and Portuguese counterparts.