It seems very unlikely that Spain would have immediately adopted a stable, multiparty parliamentary democracy after Franco if it were not literally surrounded b

It seems very unlikely that Spain would have immediately adopted a stable, multiparty parliamentary democracy after Franco if it were not literally surrounded by a community of European nations that it interacted with intimately. The right to self determination for every nation is the bedrock of the international system that Europeans created after centuries of bloody religious strife. Not sure how Hong Kong is a great example, unless you're proposing to go back to the days of colonialism and Westerners imposing their rules and values by force.