Realm
Period of Spanish history (1936–1975)
Francoist Spain, also known as Nationalist Spain, Falangist Spain, the Franco regime, or the Franco dictatorship, officially the Spanish State, was a state established in Nationalist-held territories of Spain ruled by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 and then comprising the whole of Spain from 1939 until Franco's death in 1975.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Francoist Spain”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Francoist Spain (Spanish: España franquista), also known as Nationalist Spain, Falangist Spain, the Franco regime, or the Franco dictatorship, officially the Spanish State (Estado Español), was a state established in Nationalist-held territories of Spain ruled by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 and then comprising the whole of Spain from 1939 until Franco's death in 1975.
The regime emerged from the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War and developed into a dictatorship centred on Franco and the institutions of the FET y de las JONS/Movimiento Nacional. In Francoist regime, historians admit characteristics of fascism in terms of functioning and ideology, especially during the first phase called the "First Francoism", during which Spain is characterized as a semi-fascist or straightly fascist and totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian regime, while afterwards it moved in a less fascist and "more conventionally authoritarian" direction. It has also been described as Catholic corporatism. Whether these characteristics of fascism, ranging from corporate statism and control over the society to strong ideological content of the regime including the myth of national rebirth through the Civil War, are enough to define the regime as fascist, remains a subject of debate.
During the Second World War, the Spanish State remained formally non-belligerent or neutral, but in practice was supportive of the Axis powers. After a period of postwar isolation and autarky, the regime shifted in the 1950s toward economic liberalization and technocratic government. Following Franco's death in 1975, Spain entered the Spanish transition to democracy.
On 1 October 1936, Franco was formally recognised as Caudillo of Spain—the Spanish equivalent of the Italian Duce and the German Führer—by the Junta de Defensa Nacional (National Defense Junta), which governed the territories occupied by the Nationalists. In April 1937, Franco assumed control of the Falange Española de las JONS, then led by Manuel Hedilla, who had succeeded José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was executed in November 1936 by the Republican government. He merged it with the Carlist Comunión Tradicionalista to form the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS. The sole legal party of Francoist Spain, it was the main component of the Movimiento Nacional (National Movement). The Falangists were concentrated at the local government and grassroots level, entrusted with harnessing the Civil War's momentum of mass mobilisation through their auxiliaries and trade unions by collecting denunciations of enemy residents and recruiting workers into the trade unions. The new government was a one-party authoritarian dictatorship explicitly modeled after Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany albeit with its own unique Spanish characteristics. Although Falangists held some important posts, the Falange's role in the regime remained limited and carefully delimited by Franco, with major areas of power retained by other institutions, especially the Catholic Church and the Army. However, the Falange remained the sole party.
The Francoists took control of the entirety of Spain through a comprehensive and methodical war of attrition (guerra de desgaste) which involved the imprisonment and executions of Spaniards found guilty of supporting the values promoted by the Republic: regional autonomy, liberal or social democracy, free elections, socialist leanings, and women's rights, including the vote. The right-wing considered these "enemy elements" to comprise an "anti-Spain" that was the product of Bolsheviks and a "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy". The latter allegation pre-dated Falangism, having evolved after the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from the Islamic Moors. Falangist founder Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera had a more tolerant position than the National Socialists in Germany. This was influenced by the small size of the Jewish community in Spain at the time that did not favor the development of strong antisemitism, despite its history. Primo de Rivera saw the solution to the "Jewish problem" in Spain as simple: the conversion of Jews to Catholicism.
With the end of the Spanish Civil War, according to the regime's own figures there were more than 270,000 men and women held in prisons and some 500,000 had fled into exile. Large numbers of those captured were returned to Spain or interned in Nazi concentration camps as "stateless enemies". Between six and seven thousand exiles from Spain died in Mauthausen. It has been estimated that more than 200,000 Spaniards died in the first years of the dictatorship from 1940 to 1942 as a result of political persecution, hunger and disease related to the conflict.
Spain's strong ties with the Axis powers led Franco to seriously consider joining them during the Second World War for ideological sympathies and irredentism with a particular focus on reclaiming the British territory of Gibraltar and taking over French Morocco, with the ideal of merging it with Spanish Morocco, alongside annexing the Oran district of Algeria, and French Cameroon as well as large amounts of food, oil, grain and other resources. This was partially fulfilled by Spain taking over the international city of Tangier after Germany defeated France. Franco would then send Juan Vigón to speak with Hitler, followed by a subsequent letter explaining Spanish demands. Hitler initially ignored such an offer, convinced that the war would soon be over and Britain would eventually come asking for terms of peace. Eventually, Hitler and the German government would turn their attention to Spanish belligerence in response to hardened British resistance during the Battle of Britain, chiefly to seize Gibraltar, and initially agreed to its demands (particularly territorial ones), but made unreasonable terms such as asking for the annexation of one of the Canary Islands and Spanish Guinea alongside territorial bases in Spanish Morocco, which were rejected by the Spaniards. These negotiations culminated in the Meeting at Hendaye between Franco and Hitler on October 23, 1940. The meeting ended in failure due to Franco's extensive demands and Hitler's reluctance to fulfill them to maintain friendly relations with Vichy France after the Battle of Dakar and disillusionment over Spanish rejection of German territorial demands during the negotiations. Another attempt at bringing Spain into the war for Operation Felix in December 1940 involving Franco and Wilhelm Canaris also ended in failure with Franco himself citing Britain's uncontested naval and aerial dominance, the worsening economic conditions, reliance on food and oil imports from the Allies and the Germans' lack of firm commitments. For the rest of the war, Spain remained neutral but continued to assist the Axis through various means such as sending the Blue Division to fight on the Eastern Front, allowing German submarines to operate in Spanish ports, permitting Gestapo spies to operate in Spain and sending tungsten and foodstuffs to Germany.
Spanish ties to the Axis resulted in its international ostracism and isolation in the early years following the war as Spain was not allowed to join the United Nations and was explicitly condemned in a 1946 resolution, ensuring that Spain would not become a founding member until 1955. This changed by the early 1950s with the Cold War that soon followed the end of hostilities in 1945, in the face of which Franco's strong anti-communism naturally tilted its regime to ally with the United States. Independent political parties and trade unions were banned throughout the duration of the dictatorship. Nevertheless, once decrees for economic stabilisation were put forth by the late 1950s, the way was opened for massive foreign investment—"a watershed in post-war economic, social and ideological normalisation leading to extraordinarily rapid economic growth"—that marked Spain's "participation in the Europe-wide post-war economic normality centred on mass consumption and consensus, in contrast to the concurrent reality of the Soviet bloc".
On 26 July 1947, Spain was declared a kingdom, but no monarch was designated until in 1969 Franco established Juan Carlos of Bourbon as his official heir-apparent. Franco was to be succeeded by Luis Carrero Blanco as Prime Minister with the intention of continuing the Francoist regime, but those hopes ended with his 1973 assassination by the Basque separatist group ETA. With the death of Franco on 20 November 1975, Juan Carlos became the King of Spain. He initiated the country's subsequent transition to democracy, ending with Spain becoming a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament and autonomous devolved governments.
After Franco's victory in 1939, the Falange was declared the sole legally sanctioned political party in Spain and it asserted itself as the main component of the National Movement. In a state of emergency-like status, Franco ruled with, on paper, more power than any Spanish leader before or since. He was not even required to consult his cabinet for most legislation. According to historian Stanley G. Payne, Franco had more day-to-day power than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin possessed at the respective heights of their power. Payne noted that Hitler and Stalin at least maintained rubber-stamp parliaments, while Franco dispensed with even that formality in the early years of his rule. According to Payne, the lack of even a rubber-stamp parliament made Franco's government "the most purely arbitrary in the world." The 100-member National Council of the Movement served as a makeshift legislature until the passing of the organic law of 1942 and the Ley Constitutiva de las Cortes (Constituent Law of the Cortes) the same year, which established the Cortes Españolas.
The Organic Law made the executive government ultimately responsible for passing all laws, while defining the Cortes as a purely advisory body elected by neither direct nor universal suffrage. The Cortes had no power over government spending, and the government was not responsible to it: ministers were appointed and dismissed by Franco alone as the "Chief" of state and government. The Ley del Referendum Nacional (Law of the National Referendum), passed in 1945 approved for all "fundamental laws" to be approved by a popular referendum, in which only the heads of families could vote. Local municipal councils were appointed similarly by heads of families and local corporations through local municipal elections while mayors were appointed by the government. It was thus one of the most centralised countries in Europe and certainly the most centralised in Western Europe following the fall of the Portuguese Estado Novo in the Carnation Revolution.
The referendum law was used twice during Franco's rule—in 1947, when a referendum revived the Spanish monarchy with Franco as de facto regent for life with sole right to appoint his successor; and in 1966, another referendum was held to approve a new "organic law", or constitution, supposedly limiting and clearly defining Franco's powers as well as formally creating the modern office of Prime Minister of Spain. By delaying the issue of republic versus monarchy for his 36-year dictatorship and by refusing to take up the throne himself in 1947, Franco sought to antagonise neither the monarchical Carlists (who preferred the restoration of a Bourbon) nor the republican "old shirts" (original Falangists). Franco ignored the claim to the throne of Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, son of the last king, Alfonso XIII, who designated himself as his heir; Franco found him too liberal. Instead, in 1969, Franco selected the young Juan Carlos of Bourbon, son of Infante Juan, as his officially designated heir to the throne, shortly after his 30th birthday (the minimum age required under the Law of Succession).
In 1973, due to old age and to lessen his burdens in governing Spain he resigned as Prime Minister and named Navy Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco to the post, but Franco remained as Chief of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Jefe del Movimiento (Chief of the Movement). However, Carrero Blanco was assassinated in the same year and Carlos Arias Navarro became the country's new Prime Minister.
During the first year of peace, Franco drastically reduced the size of the Spanish Army—from almost one million at the end of the Civil War to 250,000 in early 1940, with most soldiers two-year conscripts. Concerns about the international situation, Spain's possible entry into World War II, and threats of invasion led him to undo some of these reductions. In November 1942, with the Allied landings in North Africa and the German occupation of France bringing hostilities closer than ever to Spain's border, Franco ordered a partial mobilization, bringing the army to over 750,000 men. The Air Force and Navy also grew in numbers and in budgets to 35,000 airmen and 25,000 sailors by 1945, although for fiscal reasons Franco had to restrain attempts by both services to undertake dramatic expansions. The army maintained a strength of about 400,000 men until the end of the Second World War.
Franco reflecting on his time in Africa said that “Without Africa I can scarcely explain myself to myself, nor can I explain myself properly to my comrades in arms.”
Text from the Wikipedia article “Francoist Spain”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.