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| Etymology and usage | |
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The formal name of Spain during the Franco era was the Spanish State (Estado Español). In 1947, the state was formally proclaimed to be a monarchy,[1] but international treaties continued after that date to refer to it as the Spanish State rather than as the Kingdom of Spain.[2][3]
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, the Nationalist forces immediately began using the form the Spanish State rather than the Spanish Republic or the Kingdom of Spain, out of deference to the differing political sensibilities of the members of the Nationalist coalition, which included, amongst others, the anti-monarchic fascist Falangists, and the rival conservative-monarchist Carlists and Legitimist parties.
Following the Second World War, both the Falangist and Carlist movements declined, while Franco's rule was consolidated. This allowed Franco to nominally restore the Spanish monarchy without any significant opposition.
[edit] Tags:Spanish,Others,Falangist,Spanish Monarchy,Spain,Spanish Civil War,Kingdom,Spanish Republic,Falangists,Carlists,Kingdom Of Spain,Republic,Civil War, | |
| History | |
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History of Spain
This article is part of a series
Early History
Prehistoric Iberia
Roman Hispania
Medieval Spain
Visigothic Kingdom
Kingdom of Asturias
Suebic Kingdom
Byzantine Spania
Al-Andalus
Reconquista
Kingdom of Spain
Age of Expansion
Age of Enlightenment
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Reaction and Revolution
First Spanish Republic
The Restoration
Second Spanish Republic
Under Franco
Spanish Civil War
Francoist Spain
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[edit] Tags:Transition To Democracy,Second Spanish Republic,History Of ,Prehistoric Iberia,Medieval Spain,Visigothic Kingdom,Kingdom Of Asturias,Suebic,Byzantine Spania,Al-andalus,Age Of Expansion,Reaction And Revolution,First Spanish Republic,The Restoration,Under Franco,Modern Spain,Economic History,Military History,Spain Portal, | |
| Establishment | |
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The Nationalist senior generals held an informal meeting in September 1936, where they elected Francisco Franco as leader of the Nationalists, with the rank of GeneralÃsimo (sometimes written in English as Generalissimo, after the Fascist Italian fashion). He was originally supposed to be only commander-in-chief, but after the death of General Emilio Mola (the initial leader of the movement) became head of state as well with nearly unlimited and absolute powers.
This provisional government ruled over the territories controlled by the Nationalists during the Civil War. Its main political action during the war was the consolidation of the heterogeneous political forces that joined the rebellion into a single party, the authoritarian Falange.[4]
During the war, the Nationalist government repressed Republican militants and sympathizers, as retaliation for the repression of clergy and Nationalist militants on the opposite side. Extrajudicial killings were widespread on both sides during the whole war. The retaliation continued right after the war, in part to punish war crimes committed under the Republican government, under a trial called Causa General. Franco's government executed, jailed, or subjected to forced labor thousands of Republicans, but many of them were entirely innocent of anything other than the flimsiest support for the Republican cause, or merely being related to known Republicans. As a result thousands chose to go into exile, mostly in France and Mexico. Of those who fled to metropolitan France, many joined the French resistance against the Nazis. One such exile in metropolitan France was LluÃs Companys, President of the Catalan Government; he was subsequently arrested and extradited to Spain in September 1940 by the Pétain regime, then executed after a military trial.
Many of those who had supported the Republic fled into exile. Spain lost thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, judges, professors, businessmen, artists, etc.[citation needed] Many of those who had to stay lost their jobs or lost their rank. Sometimes those jobs were given to unskilled and even untrained personnel. This deprived the country of many of its brightest minds, and also of a very capable workforce.[citation needed]. However, this was done to keep Spain's citizens consistent with the ideals sought by the FET y de las JONS and Franco.
[edit] Tags:Catalan,Francisco Franco,Absolute,Authoritarian,Single Party,GeneralÃsimo,Fascist Italian,General Emilio Mola,Falange,French Resistance,LluÃs Companys,Catalan Government,The Pétain Regime, | |
| World War II years (1939–1945) | |
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Main article: Spain in World War II
In September 1939, World War II broke out in Europe. After the collapse of France in June 1940, Spain adopted a pro-Axis non-belligerency stance (for example, it offered Spanish naval facilities to German ships), and returned escaping Allied servicemen and fleeing resistance fighters to the Nazis, returning the favour paid by the Nazis when they had contributed forces including the Stuka dive bombers to support Franco and the Nationalists during the Civil War.
Adolf Hitler met Franco in Hendaye, France (23 October 1940), to discuss the Spanish entry in the war joining the Axis. Franco's demands (food, military equipment, Gibraltar, French North Africa, etc.) proved too much and no agreement was reached.
Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German mining rights in Spain. Some historians argue that Franco made demands that he knew Hitler would not accede to in order to stay out of the war. Other historians argue that he simply had nothing to offer the Germans. Franco did send volunteer troops to fight communism joining the Axis armies on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union. The unit name was the División Azul, or Blue Division, after the Falange's party color, whose members were known as 'blueshirts'. Franco returned to complete neutrality in 1943, when the tide of the war had turned decisively against Germany. However, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, despite the Cuban armed forces not being greatly involved in World War II, had suggested a joint U.S.-Latin American assault on Spain in order to overthrow the Franco regime.[5]
[edit] Tags:Soviet Union,Spain In World War Ii,World War Ii,Adolf Hitler,Hendaye,Axis,Gibraltar,French North Africa,Eastern Front,División Azul,Fulgencio Batista,Cuba,U.s.,Latin American, | |
| Isolation (1945–1953) | |
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After the war, the Allies used Spain's ties to the Axis powers to keep it from joining the United Nations. Franco's government was seen, especially by Soviet countries but also by the Western allies, to be a remnant of the central European fascist regimes.[citation needed] Under these circumstances, a UN resolution condemning Franco's government followed. The resolution encouraged countries to remove their ambassadors in Spain, and established the basis for measures against Spain if the government remained authoritarian. Only neighbouring Portugal, Ireland and a few Latin American, Arabian and Asian countries, refused to comply with this advice.
The consequence of all of this was the establishment of an embargo against the Francoist regime in 1946 — including the closure of the French border — with very little success, as it boosted support for the regime. The isolation was represented by Franco's regime as a modern version of the Black Legend, with the most fanatical partisans claiming it was a machination of Jews and Freemasons against Catholic Spain. (Historian Vicente Carcel Orti asserts that anticlerical Freemasons had in fact played a large part in the anti-Catholic acts of the prior Republican government since they held key government positions, including at least 183 deputies in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), and thus were instrumental in the making of anti-Catholic laws.[6]) This impression of machination helped to rally significant popular support for the regime such as the large scale 1946 demonstration held in Madrid. In 1947, the president of Argentina, Juan Perón, ignored the UN embargo and sent his wife Eva Perón (Evita) with much needed food supplies. The Spaniards, and Franco himself, heartily welcomed Evita.
After World War II, the Spanish economy was still in disarray. Rationing cards were still used as late as 1952. War and economic isolation prompted the regime to move towards autarky, a movement warmly welcomed by Falangists. The tenets of the economy were: reduction of imports, self-sufficiency, state-controlled production and commercialization of first order goods, state-funded industry and construction of infrastructure — heavily damaged during the Civil War — through the use of improvised means.
In other aspects the regime continued showing its heavy-handedness when it withdrew the press credentials of six U.S. reporters in 1951.[7]
[edit] Tags:Madrid,Catholic,United Nations,Black Legend,Machination,Jews, | |
| The end of isolation (1953–1959) | |
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Eisenhower and Franco in Spain in 1959
The increased tensions between the U.S. and the USSR in the 1950s led the American government to search for new allies in Europe. Franco's strong anti-Communist stance as well as the strategic location of Spain made the Spanish State a potential ally in the Cold War. This was demonstrated by the offer of the Blue Division to the U.S. in 1950, for service in the Korean War, which was turned down.
Spain's international ostracism was finally broken in 1953 when Spain and the United States signed the Pact of Madrid in a series of agreements under which Spain received some financial benefits in the form of grants and loans in return for hosting American military bases (such as Naval Station Rota, opened in 1955). The same year, the Spanish government signed the Concordat with the Vatican.
In 1955, Spanish wealth approached the pre-Civil War levels of 1935, leaving behind the disasters of the war and the struggle of isolation.[8] Spain was admitted to the UN in 1955 and to the World Bank in 1958.[9] Other Western European countries, including Italy, were from that point eager to restore good contacts with Francoist Spain.
Spain's gradual readmission to the international fold was given visible form with the visit of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in December 1959.[10]
[edit] Tags:Cold War,United States, | |
| The | |
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A SEAT 600.
Main article: Spanish Miracle
The Spanish Miracle (Desarrollo) was the name given to the Spanish economic boom between 1959 and 1973. It is seen by some as the most remarkable positive legacy of the regime. During this period, Spain largely surpassed the per capita income that differentiates developed from underdeveloped countries and induced the development of a dominant middle class.
The boom was bolstered by economic reforms promoted by the so-called "technocrats", appointed by Franco, who pushed for public investment in infrastructure development, as recommended by the International Monetary Fund. The technocrats were a new breed of economists who replaced the old, prone to isolationism, Falangist guard.
The implementation of these policies took the form of development plans (planes de Desarrollo) and it was largely a success: Spain enjoyed the second highest growth rate in the world, just after Japan, and became the ninth largest economy in the world, just after Canada. Spain joined the industrialized world, leaving behind the poverty and endemic underdevelopment it had experienced since the loss of the Spanish Empire in the 19th century.
1971 newsreel film about Spain under Franco
Although the economic growth produced noticeable improvements in Spanish living standards and the development of a middle class, Spain remained less economically advanced relative to the rest of Western Europe (with the exception of Portugal, Greece and Ireland). At the heyday of the Miracle, 1974, Spanish income per capita peaked at 79 percent of the Western European average, only to be reached again 25 years later, in 1999.
The 14 years of recovery led to an increase in (often unplanned) building on the periphery of the main Spanish cities to accommodate the new class of industrial workers brought by rural exodus.
The icon of the Desarrollo was the SEAT 600 (a license-built Italian Fiat 600) the first car for many Spanish working class families, produced by the Spanish factory SEAT or Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo.
1969 also saw the Spanish government close the border with Gibraltar. Aircraft from Gibraltar were stopped from travelling to Spain or banned from using Spanish airspace. The border remained closed until the 1980s and air restrictions were only lifted in 2006.
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| Franco's last years (1973–1975) | |
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The 1973 oil crisis severely affected Spain, and brought the economic growth to a halt. This caused a new wave of strikes (nominally illegal at the time).
Franco's declining health during the early 1970s gave more power to Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, allegedly his caretaker and guardian of young Juan Carlos, the future king. Nevertheless, ETA was planning to assassinate Blanco, and finally, the commando led by Argala, after two years of work, exploded a bomb which was located in a tunnel dig under the road he used to drive every morning. The operation was named Operación Ogro and it was highly celebrated especially in the Basque Country and in the dissident areas of Spain.[11]
Carlos Arias Navarro took over as President of the Spanish Government, and tried to introduce some reforms to the decaying regime, but he struggled between the two factions of the regime, the conservative búnker and the aperturistas, who promoted transition towards democracy.
But there was no way back to the old regime: Spain was not the same as in post-Civil War times and the model for the now wealthy Spaniards was the prosperous Western Europe, not the impoverished post-war Falangist Spain. Additionally, a considerable number of Spanish men had worked in Western Europe in the previous years as cheap labour forces, thereby encountering the economic growth and wealth of other western Europeans.
Meanwhile, in Western Sahara the situation became increasingly difficult, with the Polisario Front fighting for the independence against colonial troops in one hand, and the Moroccan regime wishing to annex the territory to Morocco.
Led by Cardinal Tarancón and hand in hand with the reforms of the Vatican Council II, the Spanish Roman Catholic church had changed deeply by the last years of the Franco regime and could not be counted as supporting it anymore.
In July 1974 Franco fell ill, and Juan Carlos took over as Head of State. Franco soon recovered, but one year later he fell ill once again, and by late October 1975, he fell into a coma and was put on life support. After a long illness, Franco died on November 20, 1975, at the age of 82—the same date as the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange. It is suspected that his doctors were ordered to keep him barely alive by artificial means until this symbolic date of the far-right.[citation needed] The historian Ricardo de la Cierva says that on the 19th around 6 p.m. he was told that Franco had already died. After Franco's death, the interim government decided to bury him at Valle de los CaÃdos, a colossal memorial to all the casualties of the Spanish Civil War, although it was conceived by Franco and has a distinctly nationalist tone.[citation needed]
Upon Franco's death, Juan Carlos became the King of Spain and immediately used his absolute power to transition to a democratic and constitutional monarchy. The Spanish State ceased to exist in 1975 de facto during the Spanish transition to democracy, and was officially over de jure after the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
[edit] Tags:Official,Basque,Spanish Transition To Democracy,King Of Spain,Constitutional Monarchy, | |
| Government | |
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After Franco's victory in 1939, the FET y de las JONS (formed in 1937 by the FE de las JONS, the Carlists, and several conservative groups) was declared the sole legal party in Spain, and asserted itself as the main component of the Movimiento Nacional. In a state of emergency-like status, the 100 member national council (central committee) of the FET worked as makeshift legislature of Spain until the passing of the Organic law of 1942 (Ley Organica) and the Constituting of the Cortes Act (Ley Constitutiva de las Cortes) the same year, which saw the grand reopening of the Cortes Generales on July 18, 1942.[12]
The Organic law stipulated the government to be ultimately responsible for all legislation of the country,[13] while defining the Cortes of Spain as a purely advisory body elected by neither direct or universal suffrage. As all ministers were appointed on the grace of Franco as the "Chief" of state and government, he was monopolized as the one source of legislation. The law of national referendums (Ley del Referendum Nacional), passed in 1945 approved for all "fundamental law" to be approved by a popular referendum, in which only the family heads could vote. Local municipal councils were appointed similarly by family heads and local corporations through elections, while the government exercised the exclusive right to appoint mayors. It was thus one of the most centralized countries in Europe, and certainly the most centralized in Western Europe following the fall of Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano in the Carnation Revolution.
The law of referendums was exercised twice; in 1947, when a law approved through a referendum revived the Spanish monarchy with Franco as interim regent for life with sole right to appoint his successor, secondly in 1966, to approve of a new "organic law", or constitution, supposedly limiting and clearly defining Franco's powers as well as formally creating the modern office of President of the Government 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 saw to antagoniz neither the monarchical Carlists (who preferred the restoration of a Bourbon), nor the republican "old shirts", i.e. the original Falangists. In 1961, Franco offered Otto von Habsburg the throne, but was refused, and ultimately followed Otto's recommendation by selecting the young Juan Carlos of Bourbon in 1969, shortly after his 30th birthday (the minimum age required under the Law of Succession).
[edit] Tags:Dictator,Regent,Dictatorship, | |
| Colonial empire and decolonization | |
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Further information: Spanish Empire
Spain attempted to retain control the last remnants of its colonial empire throughout Franco's rule. During the Algerian War (1954–6 Tags: | |
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