We present a unified approach to the study of Radon transforms related to the group S-n and its q-analogue GL(n)(q). In both cases, in a uniform way, we define a sequence of generalized Radon transforms that are intertwining operators for natural representations associated to Gel'fand spaces for our groups. This sequence and the sequence of their adjoint enable us to decompose in a recursive way these natural representations into irreducibles and to compute explicitly the associated spherical functions. Our methods and results rely then strongly on q-analogy.