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We've all heard quite a but about how awful Fascist Germany and-to a lesser extent-Italy were and how any adherents to Fascist ideals are basically demons, but we don't hear a lot about Fascist Spain.
Growing up, I didn't even know Spain was ever run by a fascist regime until I was almost in college and that was onlu because of my own curiosity and research into WWII.
Even when getting my M.A. in History, I don't think I ever heard a single lecture on Franco's Spain or even more than a passinh mention of it.
Is that because it just got lost in the shuffle and overshadowed by its larger cousins Germany and Italy? Or because it wasn't that bad of a place to live and so didn't fit the narrative we're all now taught and would just muddy the waters and make things a bit uncomfortable for those people teaching? Or is there some other reason I'm not aware of precisely because of the lack of education and discussion about it?
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Even if it's just in purely economic terms, there are two different periods in the history of Francoist Spain.
The first period went from 1939 to 1959. Devastated by the civil war and isolated by the international community after the end of WWII, Spain relied on policies of autarky to manage its economy. Those were years of economic depression or stagnation, black markets, hunger and migration to other countries.
Things started improving with the signing of the Pact of Madrid in 1953, with Spain offering military bases in exchange of American aid. But the most important changes happened around 1959, when Franco put technocrats in charge of the conomy and the country joined the IMF and the World Bank. This led to the so called "Spanish Miracle", an economic boom in industralisation and, most importantly, tourism. The country prospered and the average quality of life improved significantly, at least until the global crisis of 1973.
Mind you, even in the years of prosperity, Spain remained a full-fledged dictatorship. Barring Franco's party and his Vertical Trade Union, every other political party and union were forbidden. Propaganda and censorship were commonplace, women were reduced to second-class citizens that dependend on their male guardians, spousing the wrong beliefs could send you to unemployment or prison (not even being a member of the favored Catholic Church was an exemption; Francoist Spain had a prison exclusively for priests, where dissidents would be sent to), and homosexuality and divorce were illegal.
For that matter I really don't know what fascist Italy was like either.
If you opposed the regime the regime would crush you. If you opposed the regime a little bit. e.g. by refusing to sing its anthems etc. it would keep you away from important, influential or respected jobs. If you toed the line, obeyed the laws and acknowledged the government's authority you would be fine. In a sense, living a good life in Franco's Spain was a choice. If you chose to oppose the regime, you would have a bad life. But obviously no one has to choose to oppose the regime, and most people chose to mind their business, and lived just fine.
Spain experienced a phenomenal increase in propserity under Franco, especially during the last 15 years, to such an extent that it was known as "the Spanish Economic Miracle". For that time, Spain was the second fastest growing economy in the world, after Japan. So a lot of people benefitted and were pulled out of poverty, and Spain caught up a lot to the rest of Europe.
Contraceptives and abortion were prohibited, and there were restrictions on what women could do, such as work. So if you were a woman who really wanted a career, it probably wasn't so great. The upside of this was that the population grew at a fast and steady pace, whereas now Spain is having lots of issues with low birthrates.
There was corruption, but there's corruption now, so that's not really a feature unique to fascism.
A lot of spaniards felt insecure because they thought that their country was seen as backwards internationally, but that's not really an issue of the system, and more an issue of who their neigbours were.
A mixture of all of these things. Spain under fascism, after the civil war, was really quite a boring country in terms of the history. It was stable, grew economically, and wasn't very influential internationally. It also didn't fit the bill of life being horrible, for most people. So outside of Spain that period doesn't get much attention - it doesn't fit a useful narrative, and didn't impact the world around it much (except Morocco).
Just glossing over the White Terror I see.
The 40s were marked by widespread hunger, from Galicia to Valencia everyone had a hard time finding enough to eat. Francos focus remained on not getting invaded and crushing lingering republican forces and sentiment. With his allies too busy loosing WWII and every other economic power busy trying to win WWII and rebuilding their own countries there after there was no spare capital to bring into the country, by the late 40s Spain was hungry and alone. The 50s saw much needed foreign money come in after Franco allies himself closer to the west the 50s saw a large exodus of impoverished Spaniards to her former colonies my grandfather among them. By the late 50s Spain’s economy was steadily growing and from then on the Spanish miracle would see continued economic prosperity for the majority of francos reign, society remained deeply conservative, but life during that time can be better compared to Libya before the fall of gadaffi, repressive but prosperous enough for most people to keep their heads down and let the good times keep coming.
I'm not an historian or anything of the sort so take what I say with a grain of salt. Also, excuse any typos as I'm on my phone and I'm a non-native English speaker
Francoist Spain was indeed a shitty place to live, specially so if you didn't fit into Franco's ideal of national catholicism. After the late 50s francoism started to open to the world and societal reform started to happen, albeit quite slowly at first. Most of what I'll describe is true only for the first decades of dictatorship.
Women couldn't open a bank account or hold a job unless given explicit permission by their husbands. Some jobs weren't even open to women as they weren't considered ladylike. Divorce was abolished and schools were separated by gender. There, women were taught how to perform domestic labors instead of science and culture. Women who didn't conform to the catholic ideal of feminity were punished and prosecuted by the state, sometimes in cruel and humiliating fashion, like getting their hair completely shaved off and being paraded around town.
Historical nationalities were also heavily repressed in the name of Spanish unity. It was forbidden to publish and teach in Catalan, Basque or Galician. It was also forbidden to speak any of these languages in most public contexts. This repression is a huge reason (although not the only) as to why these languages have become minoritary in many areas.
Homosexuality was considered a crime and homosexuals were jailed and sent to foced labour camps. Unions were forbidden and worker's rights dramatically cut. Both of my grandparents were in jail for striking at their workplace. Any sort of political dissidence meant at the very least jailtime. Censorhip was heavily used in art and culture. Attendance to mass was almost mandatory, propaganda was rampant and all sorts of liberties repressed.
There's also the brutal post-war years: hunts against combatants or sympathizers of the republic, court-martialing and death sentences being dished out left and right, the rationing, hunger and misery; and the hundreds of thousands that were forced into exile. Francoist Spain was definetly not a fun place to live, specially if you consider that all of this repression and social regression happened right after the republican period, which was a huge social leap forward for Spain.
This is the best response I think. I lived there in 1972-1973 towards the end of Franco's reign and the difference between Spain at that time, and Italy at the time was pretty remarkable. u/anitgos talks about the mood of the country then, and is spot on. I remember how furtive people behaved and how closed everything felt. People mostly wore black, blue and grey at a time when color was the rule (especially in Europe). There was literally little color, people on the street seemed suspicious, miserly, and closed (except for in resort towns like Sitges where there were more visiting foreigners).
I had the opportunity to travel all over Spain for sports competitions and the things I remember were listening to hours of real cante flamenco while driving through Castilla La Mancha and Andalusia and getting off the bus in small towns where we would stop for food, and be astounded to see villagers wearing rope & tire sandals in the middle of winter, hauling stuff on donkeys, and not just one or two people. It was like nothing had changed from the middle ages. Then in the cities, places that should have felt vibrant (shopping areas, central squares) just felt subdued. The year I was there, was the last time the regime garroted a young "Marxist" to send a message to troublesome students, which tended to put a damper on protests that were normal everywhere else in Europe and the US at that time.
The Guardia Civil were fearsome and had free rein. Just as an example: We'd be traveling to other cities to participate in sporting events and have our bus stopped, boarded, and at gunpoint, emptied out at roadblocks in the middle of nowhere. This happened several times during my stay there. On one trip that I was not on, one of my classmates was arrested for possessing a joint and as sentenced to 15 years hard labor in Spanish prison. I left the country before I found out whether he had to serve all that time there. I do remember the US embassy/military establishment could do nothing (or would do nothing) for him. One tread very very carefully in those days.
The use of those languages in a political context was prohibited and repressed. You also couldn't learn it in school until the later years of the regime. They were also refereed to as patois to imply that they were dialects only spoken by the uneducated. However, books were allowed to published and it appeared on tv. El Premio Sant Jordi de Novela for example is a Catalan writing award that began in 1947.
This is an interview from 1967 talking about the Day of Books.
https://youtu.be/QPUpMPz1rxg
My mother born 1943 in Zamora has told me a few stories but also she admits that she was well off as my grandfather was "El panadero" which meant they were rationed the flour to feed the whole village. Stories of children passing out just from the smell of bread because they were so hungry. She told me that she had an aunt from the city that would come to the village and put beans in the hem of her dress to smuggle home and feed her children. A lot of stories about being hungry.
That was in war, and yes, many horrible stories happened but I think he means after all that, 50s, 60s, 70s...
Life was not that bad then, we caught up quickly for being an isolated country after war.
Post war. War ended in '39 Franco died 1975. My mother moved here in 1970
I have seen this post a little late but I will answer you, I am Spanish although when I was born Franco had already died a long time ago, there are 2 clear stages the first from 1939 to 1959 where the dictatorship was clearly fascist although a fascimo that unlike Italy and Germany was very Catholic and was known as the national Catholicism economically it was an autocracy due especially to the commercial blockades he suffered until 1952 there were ration cards due to the ruin in which the country was and the commercial blockade suffered by the victors of World War II with the arrival of the Cold War and the alliance with the USA, the blockade ceased and the economy began to be something capitalist, as for the political Franco had all the power and the most powerful organizations were the army and the Catholic Church , unlike Germany or other countries, there are still many nostalgic dictatorships in Spain and even the country's main right-wing party (PP) was founded by members of the Falange (Franco's party), right now in Spain it is still a very topical issue
sorry for my bad level of English
It's ok about your English. I was able to understand what you were saying.
Thank you for your reply!
An overwhelming social and cultural backwardness. A friend told me that when she was young it felt like living in a black and white movie. I agreed.
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As young teens we felt like being abandoned in a dusty old corner while the world was passing us by. Like western Europe had technicolor and we were stuck in a black and white society, black and white morals, black and white world. Add then the repression, and the fear, and you got the picture.
Say any fact, feelings are not really a good way to defend a point. We got colour in TV in 1972 which it was a bit late, but normal thinking that we were excluded from the world for a long time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_introduction_of_color_television_in_countries#/media/File%3ATimeline_of_the_introduction_of_colour_television_by_decade.svg
Think you miss the point. I'm not talking about TV or cinema shows. I thought the metaphor was quite clear. Seems it wasn't. Ok.
Don't know man, Spain got public TV pretty soon thanks to the aliance we had with USA (we let them sail our boats in the Mediterranean in exchange of many benefits that avoided deglobalization)
I can tell you what my grandparents and parents told me, and Spanish history books.
It was not like nazi Germany, it was like any country but you just shouldn't join any kind of organization that wasn't approved by the government.
Grouping was forbidden to avoid revelation, if not approved by the government, and there was censorship in media. Education was manipulated but just in a Christian /Conservative way, other than that, not so different from that Era. Homosexuals were detained, there was racism but like in America and most of the world...
Comunist and Republicans (people that still believed in the Republica of Spain) were the target for Franco mostly.
If you have any specific question feel free to ask.
Ok, would you say Fascism is inherently bad?
Is the treatment of Fascist ideology in Western culture a product of its most well-known adherents having been the losers of WWII?
Would you choose to live in a Fascist country that had no racial policies?
Why do you think fascism is so vilified and would you say that vilification is unwarranted or right?
Yes, fascism is bad. Here we didn't have as many consequences as Germany had and many old people still think it was a great Era for Spain.
New generations don't (there are exceptions, but there's a sentiment)
Ofc we hate fascism because they lost WW2, but I believe the good band won, the one that let their citizens and inmigigrants have rights without looking at the race or killing in mass.
Spain stopped being a dictatorship to became a monarchy, and since the winners were alive and the losers were not, no one complained. But now we are changing things, new generations asked for the removal of Franco's corpse from monumento de los caídos (graveyard for the fascists, build by the losers / prisoners) recently and the removal of the glorification of the dictatorship symbols and monuments. Streets are constantly being renamed (the ones that had fascists names). We are also starting to hate the monarchy, when old people die we hope it to be removed, they are useless and eating taxes.
Fascism is vilified because it should be, freedom and votes are the way to go, the recent movements that I told you about monarchy and dictatorship started when the internet became a thing, people have been eating shit news for a long time here about our past.
Racial discrimination is the same, you can't generalize any race, people are people, there are good and bad of all kinds.
As a guy with a high school education, the only reason I know of Franco's Spain is Pan's Labyrinth :X
Triumph of a Democracy is a great book if you want to get a sense of what life was like towards the later years of the regime right before it transitioned into a democracy. Several users have mentioned the Spanish Miracle that occured around the end of the 50s lasted into the 70s. However it didn't last and you can get a sense from the book, how stagnation lead to Spain wanting to open up, political violence from the left, right, and peripheral nationalist, and also the old guard in the regime who though the regime needed to crack down even harder.