Hip bars, sleek high-speed trains and free-spending companies all testify to how far Spain has come since the dark days of dictator General Francisco Franco. But 30 years after his death, one does not have to scratch the surface very hard to find that old wounds from his era, and the civil war which preceded it, are still tender if not open.
With a Socialist government in power since March last year, a nation which has kept strong Catholic ties is now discussing historically thorny issues such as more autonomy for its regions and a new school curriculum which downgrades religious study.
Those changes, plus the approval this year of gay marriage, have enraged some of the old guard who backed the Generalisimo.
Franco took charge in Spain after a bloody 1936-39 conflict which pit his fascist forces against Republicans, communists and anarchists. The Church was a target of leftist fury because of its support for landowners and, eventually, Franco himself.
Since Franco's death on November 20, 1975, Spain has been transformed: it has established a stable democracy, joined the European Union and developed a prosperous, successful economy.
But some still hanker after the old days: hundreds of Franco sympathisers, many making the Fascist salute, protested this year when Madrid's last statue of the dictator was removed in the dead of night.
Extreme right-wing groups have resurfaced, angered by moves to consider more autonomy for the wealthy north-eastern Catalonia region and by the general liberal policies of the new Socialist government led by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Fernando Cantalapiedra, the 25-year-old head of the Falange, a far right group that was one of Franco's original supporters, accused Zapatero of reviving old conflicts.
"We are seeing revenge tactics and deep down the wounds of the civil war have not been buried but are being opened again... We understand that the main person responsible for this is Zapatero," he told Reuters in an interview.
"National unity ... is on tenterhooks. Franco did know how to defend that unity. Without any doubt, the Catalan statute is almost a definitive step towards independence."
The statute, drawn up by the Catalan assembly and backed by an overwhelming majority there, defines the region as a nation within Spain. It is being debated in the national parliament where it is likely to be amended.
The opposition right-wing Popular Party (PP) says the plan is a threat to Spanish unity and flouts the constitution.
The ruling Socialists say some amendments will be needed but accuse the PP of being unnecessarily alarmist. The plan is particularly sensitive for Zapatero as some of the parties which created it are his allies in the Madrid parliament.
The modern split mirrors the civil war divisions and appears to have been amplified since the Socialists took power again.
"The vestiges of Franco can still very much be seen in a right-wing in which Catholic (Spanish) nationalism still has an enormous influence," Santiago Carrillo, one of the last living symbols of the defeated Republic, told Reuters in an interview.
Carrillo, the 90-year-old former head of the Communist Party who was exiled during Franco's rule, said this right-wing still believed that the left had stolen political power from them.
In a spooky echo of events during the last days of Franco's dictatorship, extreme right-wingers attacked a book shop earlier this year in which Carrillo was to take part in a debate.
"(The right) is at heart very authoritarian and stuck to the idea of a centralist state," said Carrillo, who returned to Spain to provide key political support for the transition to democracy in the 1970s.
The Catalan controversy and a proposed bill which would downgrade religious study and cut funding to Church schools have prompted public mud-slinging from both sides.
In the conservative daily newspaper ABC, columnist Francisco Rodriguez Adrados compared Zapatero's government to the one that preceded the civil war. "They are anti-American ... anti-military, anti-clerical," he wrote.
Zapatero has said he was influenced by his grandfather, a Republican shot during the war who wrote a note hours before his death, which read "I die innocent, and I forgive."
The Church, which saw around 6,000 of its priests, nuns and other officials killed by Republicans during the war according to historians, has repeatedly clashed with the Socialists.
Carlos Esteban, the deputy editor of the Catholic weekly Alba said the government's actions had put paid to any hopes that the Church would apologise for supporting Franco.
"These (Socialists moves) are not attempts to overcome the past," he told Reuters.
Political skirmishing aside, many in Spain have long observed a tacit so-called pact of silence about the civil war. Many say this was essential to enable the country to move forward after the dictatorship. But there are calls for a change here too.
Human rights group Amnesty International this year estimated at 30,000 the number of people who died or disappeared in the war and under Franco's rule. Many victims were buried in mass or secret graves, with families left to investigate themselves.
Amnesty and Spain's best-known High Court judge, Baltasar Garzon, have called on people to confront the past.
But for many young people, that past is already irrelevant.
"It is only now that Spain is starting to recognise that its youth knows very little of its own history," Carrillo said.
A cinema project called "Between the Dictator and Me" bears this out: six young directors, all born after 1975, made a documentary about the first time they heard about Franco.
"There is a common thread; an evident disorientation about (Franco) ... which comes, in part, from a silence surrounding him in their immediate circles," Marta Andreu, the production company director, told El Pais newspaper.
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