Spain

G

3

The Franco Dictatorship

Spain’s savage civil war was followed by an unusually vindictive peace. Franco made no attempt at national reconciliation. Fervently anti-communist, Franco characterized Republicans as anti-Spanish “Reds,” a term that included anyone associated with the Second Republic. The Franco government tracked people suspected of Republican sympathies and persecuted them for decades. In the first four years after the war, the government imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people and executed many thousands of others.

The dictatorship’s main sources of political support included the army, the Catholic Church, and the Falange, which became known as the National Movement after 1945. The National Movement was the nation’s only legal political organization, and Roman Catholicism became the official state religion. The army provided the dictatorship with security, while the Catholic Church and the National Movement gave Franco’s rule a measure of legitimacy. The Cortes under Franco was reduced to an advisory body with little independent power. Most seats in the Cortes were filled by appointment or indirect election, and many members held positions in Franco’s administration.

Once in power, Franco revoked most of the Republican-backed legislation that favored workers and peasants. Strikes were forbidden, and the state required workers and business owners to join syndicates controlled by the government. Franco endorsed rigid laws against abortion and divorce, and he turned control of education over to the Catholic Church. Committed to the ideal of a culturally uniform Spain, Franco suppressed regionalist movements in Catalonia, the Basque provinces, and Galicia. Press censorship and government surveillance of potential political leaders restricted dissent across Spain.

G3

a

World War II

Spain adopted a policy of neutrality during World War II (1939-1945). Franco clearly favored the Axis Powers, especially Germany and Italy, which had supported the Nationalists during the civil war, and he openly sympathized with fascist ideas. However, Spanish industries were inefficient and the transportation system was largely in ruins, making mobilization for war difficult. Initially, Franco pledged to join the Axis war effort in exchange for raw materials, railroad equipment, and weapons. However, in 1940 German dictator Adolf Hitler rejected Franco’s conditions for Spanish participation as too costly. Thus Spain spent most of the war as a pro-Axis neutral; Franco permitted German ships and submarines to use Spanish ports and sold raw materials to Germany. Franco also sent a division of troops to help Germans fighting in the Soviet Union.

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A cautious, pragmatic ruler, Franco shifted policy as the Allied Powers began winning the war. By 1943 Franco had loosened ties with Germany and moved toward greater neutrality. He also diminished the political role of the Falange. Imprisonments dropped sharply, and executions gradually tapered off. During the last phase of the war, Spain sold valuable raw materials to the Allies. By that time, however, the Franco regime was identified with the Axis, and Spain was considered a hostile power by the victors of World War II.

G3

b

Political and Economic Isolation

Spain emerged from the war politically and economically isolated. In the immediate postwar period, many countries cut off diplomatic relations with Spain. The United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) excluded Spain from membership. Franco, however, made continued overtures to the West. In an effort to allay international criticism of his rule, Franco declared Spain a monarchy in 1947 and announced that a king would assume the throne after his death, incapacity, or retirement.

Domestically, Franco’s economic policies further isolated Spain and led to a disastrous period of economic stagnation. During the 1940s and much of the 1950s, Franco’s government pursued a policy of autarky (economic self-sufficiency without foreign trade or investment). Franco believed that Spain could achieve economic recovery and growth through rigorous state regulation of the economy. However, Franco’s government made few investments to rebuild the nation’s shattered infrastructure, and his policies effectively deprived Spain of foreign investment. Agricultural output and industrial production languished, wages plummeted, and the black market flourished. Raw materials and food were rationed until the 1950s. Malnutrition and poor medical care afflicted an entire generation of Spaniards.

G3

c

The Reemergence of Spain

In the late 1940s Western powers began to reevaluate their relations with the Franco regime. The Cold War pitting communist against non-communist nations was underway, and some governments viewed Franco as a potential anti-communist ally. After the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States began to recognize the strategic importance of the Iberian Peninsula and resumed diplomatic relations with the Spanish government. Spain soon received loans from U.S. banks. Under an agreement concluded in 1953, the United States gave the Franco regime substantial economic aid in exchange for access to several Spanish military and naval bases. The UN admitted Spain as a member in 1955. Open hostility toward Spain ended, and most nations resumed diplomatic relations with the Spanish government.

By the early 1950s Spain’s poor economic performance forced adjustments to Franco’s policy of isolationism. Franco reorganized the government in 1951, lifted many of the government’s economic controls, and increased public investment. Economic aid from the United States supported these policies, and by 1952 agricultural and industrial production had returned to pre-civil-war levels.

Throughout the 1950s Franco sought to preserve his dictatorial rule, and he continued to suppress political dissent. However, Franco’s efforts failed to contain the expanding political opposition. By the mid-1950s, student agitation, sporadic labor strikes, and the emergence of a reform wing within the Catholic Church increasingly challenged Franco’s authoritarian hold on power. At the same time, Franco’s refusal to seriously open the Spanish economy to foreign trade and investment contributed to an escalating economic crisis. Rampant inflation, falling real wages, and growing debt all seemed to underline the failure of the government’s economic policies.

These political and economic crises forced Franco to accept a major cabinet reorganization in 1957 that increased labor and business representation in government. Power over economic policy fell largely to members of Opus Dei, a socially conservative Roman Catholic lay organization that promoted economic reforms as a means of improving society. The new Opus Dei ministers were competent economic planners and in 1959 they developed a stabilization plan that provided a framework for economic growth. The plan devalued Spain’s currency, opened the country to foreign investors, and obtained more loans from the United States. It also encouraged tourism and permitted Spanish workers to seek employment in other European countries. A period of spectacular economic expansion ensued.

G3

d

The Economic Miracle

Spain’s opening to the world unleashed unprecedented social and economic change. During the 1960s, industrial production boomed, and gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 40 percent. Foreign currency poured into Spain as the tourism industry rapidly expanded and Spanish workers abroad sent money to relatives back home. Impoverished agricultural workers left the fields for better-paying jobs in the cities. At the same time, mechanization of agriculture increased output and reduced costs of production. A growing labor shortage pushed wages upward, and the middle class grew larger and wealthier. Labor agitation also increased. Workers, dissatisfied with the government-controlled labor syndicates, organized unofficial trade unions to press for better pay, benefits, and working conditions.

Greater worker prosperity brought rapid social change. A massive migration from the countryside to cities accelerated Spain’s transition from a rural to an urban society. A large housing program sponsored by the government eased the social costs of this transition. Secondary and university education expanded, and illiteracy fell dramatically. These changes also drew Spain closer to the rest of Western Europe; Spaniards became more secularized and sophisticated as their exposure to new ideas and ways of life increased.

The great changes underway in Spain created a society at odds with the aging Franco dictatorship. Many workers had lived and worked in European democracies and were impatient with Franco’s repressive labor policies. Confronted by a growing number of strikes and demonstrations, the government moved erratically between compromise and arbitrary crackdowns. Moreover, the Catholic Church, a fundamental source of support for the government, had begun moving away from the regime. By the mid-1960s a new generation of Spanish bishops, encouraged by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, grew increasingly sympathetic to popular demands for progressive social policies and more political freedoms.

Despite continued repression by the dictatorship, a small amount of political liberalization accompanied the great economic expansion in the 1960s. In 1965 a new law recognized the right of workers to strike for purely economic—not political—reasons, although walkouts remained illegal. The Franco regime relaxed press censorship, to some extent, in 1966. Another reform made the Cortes slightly more representative and increased its powers. In 1969 Franco reaffirmed Spain’s formal status as a monarchy by naming Juan Carlos de Borbón, grandson of Alfonso XIII, to be his successor as head of state.

The gradual liberalization of Spain was also evident abroad. Spain granted the West African colony of Spanish Guinea its independence as Equatorial Guinea in 1968; seven years later Spain ceded Spanish Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania. Still, with Franco in power many European governments remained unfriendly toward Spain. The smaller democratic countries of northwestern Europe remained strongly opposed to the Spanish government’s membership in West European military and economic alliances. Spain’s first application for membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) was refused in 1964, although a limited associate relationship was arranged.