In this introduction, A. Nesti lays out the principle characteristics of the nature and dialectic of contemporary Spanish Catholicism: the dependence of Spain on foreign investments, the role of the monarchy at the time of the change in regime, the formation of a political class for whom the anti-Franco struggle was unknown, the impulse in favour of change within the boundaries of civil society and the Church, and the europeanization of the Iberian peninsula. The study of contemporary Catholicism in Spain permits, as do few other cases, the exploration of a society in all its specificity during a period within which it restructured itself according to a process of capitalist modernization. With the aid of numerous contributions to this edition of Social Compass, it is not only a knowledge of the Spanish phenomenon which is made possible but, due to its emblematic character, a deapening of the sense and of the destiny of contemporary Catholicism well beyond the horizons of the Mediterranean basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]