Understanding the Franco Regime: Repression and Identity in Spain
Debugging staff was another key resource to provide consistency to the state rising. The officials that were considered very similar or opposing the Franco regime were sections of their sites.
Throughout the forties, an atmosphere of distrust and persecution prevailed around the country. The network of heads of district and house established by the phalanx of devoted followers captured by the regime while the influence of the extended game only lexpedició through certificates of good conduct and recommendations of any kind.
Freedom of speech was reduced to zero due to the overwhelming presence of censorship, controlled largely by the church. Books and files that were considered dangerous were banned, and writers, works, and themes were suppressed.
1.1. The Repression in Catalonia
The system applied a policy of ferrenya decatalanització and reespanyolització in Catalonia, in order to remove the country’s national identity. Catalonia lost its political leaders and intellectuals along with their political and cultural institutions. They prohibited and prosecuted political organizations, unions, and civic organizations, especially those of a workers’, democratic, or nationalist nature.
The Franco regime actively pursued the Catalan language, expelling it from all public areas and confining it solely to private domestic spaces.
Symbols of Catalan identity or acts that may have a sense of Catalan were banned.
2. The Blue of the Franco Years
During the 40 years of the Franco regime, the rhetoric and image of fascist Spanish falangisme were adopted. Their blue uniforms and martial parades, like the yoke and arrows, flooded all over Spain. The Falange had to share the URL with the new state, the military, the church, and other political sectors of the conservative right.
In those years, it was evident the clear desire to perpetuate Franco ahead of when the state laid the foundations of their ideological and political autocracy, enacting laws and undemocratic institutions, creating a certain fascist inspiration.
2.1. Political Families and Ideological Principles
The policy implemented by Franco was characterized by pragmatic adaptation to the events occurring in the international context and Spanish society.
Without the political skills of his children, Franco was limited to adopting the principles of the institutions and political formations and social groups that perched at the highest magistracy of the new state: the military, the church, and the Falange, along with monarchists and traditionalists, were called the families of the regime. They sought to divide families and trends, counteracting their influence so that no one or any group could monopolize power.
His dictatorship always maintained a series of principles that gave their identity signals. The three highlighted were: nacionalpatriotisme, nacionalsindicalisme, and National Catholicism.
Lexèrcit and Nacionalpatriotisme
The main contribution to the ideology of the military regime was nacionalpatriotisme, a traditionalist and unitary vision of Spain that Franco took over as his own, given his personal career and military training.
It was a conception of Spain in which the defense of the territorial integrity of the motherland should be the priority of the government.
1. The Postwar Immediate Context
TA: Praise and Repression
Franco was a dictator who stopped at a power without parallel in the history of Spain, due to how events developed in the peninsular bends during the Civil War.
The feverish exaltation of his national Caudillo helped place him above all the political regime. This situation was reinforced by a brutal repression of the opposition, relegated to exile, concentration camps, and execution squads in absolute silence through a strong censorship.
1.1. Exaltation of Franco as Caudillo
Franco, as generalissimo of the three armies and head of the party, united the rebels in providing them with clear leadership.
On August 9, 1939, a new state law was published that increased Franco’s power. The status of the FET was further increased, giving him direct control over the party. This absolute control of executive power was extended to legislative power, governing statutes based on transcendental principles and creating courts that always needed his approval for legislative work. Indirect guardianship over the judiciary was established.
He contributed to excessive laudatory propaganda that was unleashed after the war. The figure of Franco became enclosed in a series of symbols and slogans that stressed his suitability for command and religiosity.
1.2. The Installation of the Opposition
The new system relied on the absolute subordination of the defeated in war. The winners had a policy of terror in areas where they knew most rejected. The main political objective during the postwar period was the elimination of any vestige of opposition to guarantee the survival of the new regime. This made it impossible to organize an effective opposition, especially considering that part of this opposition was in forced exile.
Peninsular Exile
A wave of panic took almost half a million people to seek refuge in exile before the systematic execution of political opponents of the Franco regime practiced in areas under their control. At first, the majority crossed the French border and followed different paths.
Some returned quickly to Hendaye. This was the case for most soldiers who had left Spain, framed in their military units. They were imprisoned in concentration camps and had to undergo lengthy investigations regarding their collaboration with the Republic.
Others were imprisoned by the French authorities as refugees in makeshift camps under subhuman conditions. When France declared war on Germany, many of these exiles joined the fight against Nazism. Later, when France was occupied by German forces, the Spanish anti-fascist fighters were pursued by the German political police (Gestapo), and some were deported to Nazi concentration camps.
In the Postwar Repression
The new regime acquired the characteristics of a militarized police state. After the war, the forces for repression doubled, increasing from 298,000 to 658,000 troops in the forties. The courts were militarized and applied the Code of Military Justice, which provided for harsher sentences than the Civil Criminal Code. The death penalty, abolished by Republican legislation, was reinstated.
Some 400,000 Spaniards experienced the dramatic ordeal of being arrested, tortured, and subjected to summary trials.