Spain Under Franco: Economy, Society, and Politics (1939-1975)

Posted on Nov 23, 2024 in History

Spain Under Franco (1939-1975)

Economic Stages

Autarky (1939-1950)

This period was marked by economic depression, severe shortages, and the disruption of modernization efforts initiated by the Republic.

Opening and Revival (1950-1960)

A gradual opening to the outside world led to an economic revival, although Spain’s growth lagged behind other European nations benefiting from Keynesian policies.

Expansion (1960-1974)

Fueled by international economic development, low energy prices, cheap labor, and tourism, the Spanish economy experienced significant growth.

Characteristics of the Franco Regime

  • Rejection of representative democracy
  • Concentration of power in the Head of State
  • Single political party
  • State-controlled unions
  • Limited fundamental freedoms

Franco’s Spain: Key Stages

The Forties: Repression and Isolation

  • Franco as Head of State and Government
  • Intense political repression
  • International isolation and economic downturn
  • Rationing until 1952
  • Juan Carlos named successor

Consequences of the Civil War

Demographic Impact
  • High mortality due to conflict, reprisals, disease, and malnutrition
  • Forced migration and exile
  • Declining birth rates
  • Significant prison population

An estimated 1,200,000 people were directly affected by the war.

Economic Impact
  • Economic collapse and depletion of reserves
  • Difficulties in reconstruction and forced exports
  • Collapse across all sectors, particularly primary and secondary
  • Reduced working population
  • Increased social inequalities
Social Implications
  • Consolidation of power among the victors (oligarchy, military, landowners, Church, and Falange)
  • End of moderate economic growth
  • Widening gap with other European countries
  • Stagnation due to autocratic policies
  • Lower standard of living compared to pre-war levels

The Fifties: A Turning Point

  • Cold War polarization
  • Spain’s entry into the UN (1955)
  • Agreement with the US for military bases
  • Attempts at cultural renewal
  • Continued political repression and strikes
Economic Planning

: The new political leaders began a process of economic liberalization that would allow linking Spain to the Western capitalist economy and stimulate economic growth. With the aim of putting an end to autarky, was launched in the Stabilization Plan (1959). This plan sought to move from a closed economy, and strong state control, to a free market economy, but related with the outside and with a greater weight of the private sector. So, removed obstacles to international trade and enacted a series measures to encourage foreign capital investment. The adoption of this plan, along with incorporating the EC, is the largest operation that has lived the Spanish economy in the twentieth century.However, the most important point is that, unlike what has been evident in previous years, the growth rate of Spanish is very uniform pattern of other European countries, most notably those in southern Europe, which, over institutional differences, play a similar role already in the fifties, the set of external relations (trade, migrant remittances, capital flows and foreign exchange from tourism). The expansion of the sixties: Change economic orientation with the entry of so-called “technocrats” in power (close to the religious organization Opus Dei) economic development through development plans. Strong inflow of tourism (the main source of wealth). The Press Act of 1966 eliminates the censorship and surveillance of what is said in the media resides in their heads. The Second Vatican Council (1966) reform the Catholic dogma: The State must recognize the religious freedom not to clash with Roma but sogue being religious. In 1966 he promulgated the Organic Law establishes the State Courts that are not popularly elected. The onset of the ETA in the early sixties is fundamental in the fight against the Franco regime. In 1968 ETA are judged a commissioner accused of killing Meliton Apples, six are sentenced to death (the famous trial of Burgos). This process is mobilizing international opinion against Franco. In 1969 Don Juan Carlos Franco’s successor is appointed. They separate the functions of head of state and head of government, they fall within the Admiral Carrero Blanco is killed in a bombing in Madrid by ETA. Between 1973 and 1975 growing opposition. The most reactionary sectors of the regime is opposed to any type of change (the “bunker”). On November 20, 1975 Franco died and Juan Carlos I was proclaimed King of Spain. The plan of stabilization and liberalization of 1959 opens, in any case, the third major phase of the Spanish economy during the Franco regime: the decade spanning the entire of the sixties and continues until 1973. The process of accumulation and growth to be adjusted until the beginning of the sixties, the dominant pattern at the scene of the OECD countries: cheap energy in absolute terms and increasingly cheap in relative terms, favorable relative price of raw materials and food, increased possibilities of external financing; adquisisción an international market expansion of technology and products needed to assimilate the changes that growth itself imposes on dominant patterns of demand and availability abuandantes manpower (both large reserves are the agricultural and potentially active women), with additional safety valve for easy export of most of the surplus labor. From sixties, the Spanish quickly entered into the model of the consumer society, class already existing in the continent’s most developed countries, who arrived from USA. More weight of women in society. This circumstance, as compared with its growing economic and social independence, as the increased supply of jobs favors joining working life outside the family. The legacy of Franco from the perspective of economic evolution:An ambivalent legacy in more ways than one. During the last two long decades of the Franco regime, economic growth was significant both in absolute terms as compared with any previous period of industrialization: and yet it was absolutely exceptional in the map of postwar Western economies and and particularly in the context of the economies of southern Europe. Besides not have lasted so long here the general situation of autarky and interventionism, the recovery of the Spanish economy could have started earlier, and before having internal rhythmic pulse to the rhythm of the production process of international economic conditions. Do not forget that the Franco regime had imposed by nature and entity insurmountable limits for certain institutional economic changes (in the field of public sector in industrial relations in the external sector, among others), without which institutional changes full implementation is holding back the scope of those transformations in the productive structure and the growth momentum precesses. CANARIA SOCIETY AND ECONOMY DURING THE FRANCO AND POLITICAL TRANSITION: (short list). The establishment of the dictatorship after the Spanish Civil War meant to Canaries, like the rest of the State, the persecution of all intellectual activity outside the ideological framework developed Franco. From the standpoint of population, Canary met continued growth and uneven result of a steep decline in mortality rates, a high rate of migration, foreign immigration into Venezuela and directed towards internal displacement of the outer islands to the plants. The Franco regime imposed in the Canaries sign an autarkic economic model. The Canarian economy would be addressed at an early stage by the Military Command of the Canary Islands and then the command economy. Its establishment and operation involved a militarization of the archipelago’s economy, based on the belief that the islands could be involved in military operations. Therefore the economy suffered a major constraint canary in its economic relations with the outside until the liberation of the sixties. Once the European war, it restarts the European demand for canaries, which resulted in export agriculture island initiate a new growth cycle. In 1960 the degree of internationalization of the Islands’ economy is larger and is the presence of the public sector and foreign capital, both mainland and foreign. It starts a cycle tourist and commercial, driven by the stabilization plan and release of the Spanish economy. Tourism is growing dramatically, while on the contrary, the agricultural sector suffered a setback, between 1940 and 1975. Between the years 1973 to 1974 starts s great crisis of the Western economies, the oil crisis, which has a important influence on the Islands’ economy. Furthermore, this period of political transition is framed by the Madrid Tripartite agreement between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania signed a few days before the death of General Franco, which involved the abandonment of the territories that make up the Spanish Western Sahara. This agreement turned to the Canaries in a border region and seriously affected the fishing industry of the islands and the use of fishing grounds in the Canary-Saharan fishing bank.