Franco’s Regime: Ideology, Social Bases, and International Relations

Posted on Mar 24, 2025 in History

The Franco Regime (1939-1959)

Ideological Foundations and Social Bases

Political and Ideological Aspects

Similarities with Fascism:
  1. Single party (FET de las JONS)
  2. Single union (vertical = Italian corporatism), mandatory for workers and employers.
  3. Militarism (the military as guarantor of order and values, a state of war until after 1948).
  4. Control of the media (press and radio of the Movement).
  5. Mass movement, exaltation of the leader, external signs of totalitarianism.
  6. Anticommunism.
Differences and Peculiarities:
  1. Military dictatorship established after victory.
  2. Support of the Catholic Church (National-Catholicism). Franco, leader by the grace of God, under a canopy; unity in the universal destiny of Spain, guarantor of Western Christian values, symbols, and religious marriage exclusively ecclesiastical censorship representation in Court and Council.
  3. Reaction against the changes occurring during the Republic: strikes = treason and application of military jurisdiction.

Social Bases: The Pillars of the Regime

  1. The army
  2. The Falange
  3. The Catholic Church
  4. Large landowners, industrialists, and bankers

Influence of the International Situation

During the Second World War (1939-1945)

Attempts to navigate between the Axis powers and sympathy for the progress of military operations…

  • 1939-1940: Neutrality and good relations with the Axis.
  • 1940-1943: Non-belligerence (aligned with fascist victories). Interview in Hendaye between Franco and Hitler (Hitler did not conform to Franco’s requirements). Blue Division sent to the USSR (Eastern Front, Leningrad).
  • 1943-1945: Return to vigilant neutrality, withdrawal of the Blue Division.

After the Second World War (1946-1953)

  • 1946-1950: Condemnation by the UN and international siege of the Franco regime (established with the support of the Rome-Berlin Axis), withdrawal of ambassadors.
  • 1950-1953: Gradual breakdown of international isolation, leveraging the Cold War and Korean War, reaffirmation of anti-communism:
  • Concordat with the Vatican, 1953.
  • Hispanic-American agreements, 1953 (aid in exchange for military bases).

Text: UN resolution 1946.

Institutionalization and Repression

Francoist “Constitutionalism”: Fundamental Laws

  1. Fuero del Trabajo (1938) inspired by the Carta del Lavoro, and single vertical union.
  2. Constitutive Act of the Cortes (1942) with the progress of the Allies in World War II:
  • Single chamber of barristers (ex officio, elected and appointed directly by Franco).
  • Drafts laws to be sanctioned by Franco.
  1. Fuero de los Españoles (1945) following the Allied victory, alleged bill of rights, which may be suspended by decree.
  2. National Referendum Act, a direct search over 25 (referendum shall be put to the inheritance law, organic law, if honest, organized by Fraga, prohibiting acts contrary).
  3. Law of Succession as Head of State (1947), Spain declares itself a kingdom, with a life regent to appoint a successor.
  4. Law of Principles of the National Movement, without reference to the Falange.
  5. Organic Law of the State (1966) Organic democracy on three pillars: trade unions, municipalities, and families.

Text: The Law of Principles.

State of War and Repression

  • State of war until 1948, some 300,000 political prisoners, concentration camps, and labor camps (Valley of the Fallen, public works).

Exile and Emigration of the Defeated

  • Destinations: France, Mexico, etc.
  • Participation in the Second World War (with the French Resistance).
  • Consequences: low levels of scientific and humanistic production in Spain.

Alternatives / Opposition

  • Republicans
    • Maintenance of republican institutions in exile.
    • Reorganization (Spanish Junta de Liberacion…).
    • Armed struggle (Maquis).
  • Monarchists: Juan de Borbón