Francoism Demise and Opposition: 1973-1975
The Agony of the Regime (1973-1975)
After the death of Carrero Blanco, a growing economic crisis took place. The French Prime Minister appointed a representative of the Franco regime hardliners: Carlos Arias Navarro, who was the Director-General of Security and Minister of the Government. Following his appointment, Lopez Rodó and the technocrats were removed from power. No government, composed of ministers of Falange extraction, was able to reconcile a theoretical aperturist purpose with repressive practice. Both Franco conservatives and those eager for reform were disappointed.
In November 1975, the dictator died, leaving behind a state that was collapsing because it was only still standing by his figure and a leading repressive apparatus.
The Problem of the Spanish Sahara
In 1975, Spain was the only survivor of Western European dictatorships. In October of that year, with Franco remarkably old and sick, the Moroccan king, Hassan II, announced the Green March, in which he invited thousands of Moroccan civilians to invade the Spanish Sahara. The march began in November, and the Franco government, very frightened, decided to leave the colony in a shameful manner, giving it to Morocco and Mauritania. The claims of Sahrawi independence and UN resolutions recommending the decolonization of the territory were not taken into account. In 1979, Mauritania renounced its portion of the Sahara, and Morocco has since faced armed resistance from the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi nationalist social movement created in 1973.
The Opposition During Early Francoism
Resistance to the Franco government was very low in this period because the opposition was very disjointed. Many of its members were in exile, and others were involved in the armed guerrillas who acted within the country. In the last years of World War II, the anti-Franco forces gained some momentum. However, it never became a serious danger because the domestic opposition, which operated in secrecy, had little chance of victory against the powerful repressive apparatus of the dictatorship. The Franco regime carried out executions; about 50,000 in 1939. Political prisoners amounted to 300,000.
Republicans in Exile
They were very disjointed but kept certain republican institutions, weakened. They attempted to create a common institution, the National Alliance of Democratic Forces (ANFD, 1944).
However, it always excluded communists, despite being one of the most active groups against Franco. This trend was reinforced during the Cold War. Prieto socialists abandoned the Republicans to close, without success, to a monarchical solution.
The division and weakness of the opposition prevented the use of the international situation favorable to anti-Franco forces between 1944 and 1947. The anarchists and, in particular, the CNT lost all their historical influence.
The Bourbons
After the death of Alfonso XIII (1941) in Fascist Italy, his son John, Count of Barcelona, who had tried to join Franco’s troops during the civil war, was the heir to the throne.
After the Allied victory in World War II, Juan de Borbón decided to claim a transition to a constitutional monarchy, expressing his willingness to reach a deal that would cede power. Following the adoption of the Law of Succession, his son Juan Carlos was appointed and educated in Spain under the principles of the Movement, which meant that he became the successor of Franco himself.
The Maquis
The guerrillas in the interior of Spain were driven mainly by Communists and, to a lesser extent, by anarchists who had fought in the Civil War and, sometimes, in the resistance against Nazism during World War II. The Communists came to organize, without success, the invasion of the Aran Valley with 4,000 armed men. The struggle of the Maquis declined after 1952.