Franco’s Spain, 1939–75

Throughout Franco’s rule, his authoritarian regime was based on the emergency war powers granted him as head of state and of the government by his fellow generals in 1936. The first decade of his government saw harsh repression by military tribunals, political purges, and economic hardship. Economic recovery was made difficult by the destruction during the Civil War (especially of railway rolling stock and communications in general), a loss of skilled labour, a series of bad droughts, and a shortage of foreign exchange and the restriction on imports of capital goods imposed by World War II and its aftermath. These difficulties were increased by Franco’s misguided policies of autarky, which aimed at economic self-sufficiency through the state control of prices and industrial development within a protected national economy cut off from the international market. The national income fell back to the levels of 1900, as industrial production and agricultural output stagnated and real wages dramatically fell. The near-famine years of the 1940s witnessed the rise of the black market and misery in rural areas that caused migration to the shantytowns of the cities. Given brutal repression and a controlled and censored press, sullen discontent could take no organized form. The regime maintained a division between the victors and the vanquished of the Civil War, with the vanquished excluded from public life.

Franco’s sympathies in World War II lay with Germany and Italy, to whom he gave moral and material support. Nevertheless, Franco demanded France’s North African colonies in compensation for military cooperation against the Western Allies, on whom Spain was dependent for food and oil imports. Hitler refused. When in 1943 it appeared that the Allies would win the war, Franco reaffirmed Spain’s nominal neutrality without gaining their benevolence.

The declared hostility of the great powers after 1945 and the diplomatic sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN), from which Spain was excluded, gave Franco’s opposition in Spain and in exile new life. Juan Carlos Teresa Silverio Alfonso de Borbón y Battenberg, conde de Barcelona (popularly known as Don Juan), heir of Alfonso XIII, presented the monarchy as something acceptable to the democratic powers and offered himself as king of all Spaniards, victors and vanquished alike. Because many of Franco’s fellow generals were monarchists hostile to the Falange, demands for a restoration were parried only with difficulty. Valiant but futile guerrilla activities, inspired largely by the Communist Party (1944–48), were brutally suppressed.

Franco met these serious difficulties with success, shifting the balance of power among his supporters from the Falange to Catholics. The Fuero de los Españoles (1945), guaranteeing personal freedoms (provided no attack was made on the regime), was a cosmetic device that failed to establish Franco’s democratic credentials with the Allies. More important for Franco was the support of the church, which was given control over education. The diplomatic ostracism imposed by the UN was skillfully turned into a means of rallying support for the regime in the name of national unity.

Franco’s confidence came from his sense that, with the onset of the Cold War, the United States would come to consider Spain a valuable ally against the Soviet Union and that France and Britain, though declaring support for the democratic opposition, would not intervene directly to overthrow him at the cost of renewed civil war. Hence, the hopes of the opposition came to nothing. In 1953 an agreement with the United States gave Franco considerable financial aid in return for the establishment of four U.S. military bases in Spain; in the same year a concordat with the Vatican gave Spain added diplomatic respectability.

By 1955, when Spain was admitted to the UN, Franco’s regime appeared secure. Internal political command remained in Franco’s hands, ensured by his control of the armed forces and by his ability to play off the groups that supported him, in particular the Falange, the monarchists, and the church. Ultimately, the Falange lost power in the National Movement, the sole legal political organization; its attempts to create a Falangist one-party state were defeated in 1956, though tensions between the Falange and the conservative elements persisted.

Opposition to the regime took the form of student unrest, strikes, and the unsuccessful efforts of the Communist Party to forge a united front and challenge the regime (1958, 1959). The moderate opposition’s attempt in 1962 to force a democratic opening in order to enter the European Economic Community (EEC) was dismissed by the regime as treason. More serious was the bankruptcy of autarky, evident in inflation, a growing deficit in the balance of payments, and strikes. This crisis was remedied by the technocrats of Opus Dei (a conservative Roman Catholic lay organization), a number of whose members were appointed to the cabinet in February 1957. The devaluation of the European currencies forced Franco to implement a stabilization plan in 1959, which provided a fierce dose of orthodox finance. Economic nationalism, protectionism, and the state intervention characteristic of autarky were abandoned in favour of a market economy and the opening of Spain to international trade and much-needed foreign investment. The stabilization plan was followed by a development plan in 1963, which was based on French indicative planning—i.e., the setting of targets for the public sector and encouragement of the private sector.

The new policies produced growth rates of more than 7 percent between 1962 and 1966, aided by a rapid increase in tourism, foreign investment, and the remittances of emigrants who, hard-hit by the immediate results of the 1959 stabilization policies, had sought employment in other European countries. There was a rural exodus from the impoverished countryside and a dramatic fall of the active population engaged in agriculture, from about two-fifths in 1960 to about one-fifth by 1976. Spain was rapidly becoming a modern industrialized country. However, the government’s policies were fiercely resisted by the Falange, who claimed that the policies were a surrender to neocapitalism. All hopes of a limited liberalization of the regime by its reformist wing were blocked by conservative elements, with the exception of Manuel Fraga’s Press Law of 1966, which gave the press greater freedom and influence.

Although the new prosperity brought a novel degree of social mobility and satisfied the enlarged middle class, the workers’ movement revived. Workers, disillusioned with the “official” syndicates run by the Falange, set up Workers’ Commissions (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras; CC.OO.) to negotiate wage claims outside the official framework and called serious strikes. Sections of the church were sympathetic to claims for greater social justice and responsive to the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council. Indeed, many younger priests were sympathetic to the Workers’ Commissions. Although the bishops generally felt that the church should support the regime, they were increasingly aware of the long-term dangers of such an alliance.

Peripheral nationalism constituted an intractable problem. In the Basque provinces the nationalists could count on the support of the clergy, and Basque nationalism developed a terrorist wing, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna; Basque: “Basque Homeland and Liberty”). The Burgos trials of Basque terrorists in 1970 discredited the regime abroad, and the following year the Assembly of Catalonia united the opposition with a demand for democratic institutions and the restoration of the Autonomy Statute of 1932.

In the 1960s elements in the regime were increasingly troubled by its lack of “institutionalization” and the problem of the succession, as Franco was in failing health and there was no designated successor. The Organic Law of 1969 gave the regime a cosmetic constitution, and in 1969 Franco finally recognized Juan Carlos, grandson of Alfonso XIII, as his successor as king and head of state; Juan Carlos’s designation was rejected by the democratic opposition as a continuation of the regime. To secure continuity, in June 1973 Franco abandoned the premiership to Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. However, in December Carrero Blanco was assassinated by ETA.

Carlos Arias Navarro, the former minister of the interior, was selected as the new premier. His government saw a fierce struggle between reformists, led by Manuel Fraga and the new foreign minister, José Maria de Areilza, who wished to “open” the regime by limited democratization from above, and the “bunker” mentality of nostalgic Francoists. Although Arias Navarro promised liberalization in a February 1974 speech, he eventually sided with the hard-line Francoists, and his Law of Associations proved to be completely unacceptable to the opposition and a defeat for the reformists. The government severely repressed ETA’s terrorist activity in the Basque provinces, executing five terrorists in September 1975 despite international protests.

Spain since 1975