Spanish Economy During Franco's Dictatorship

SPANISH ECONOMY DURING FRANCO’S DICTATORSHIP:
AUTARCHY AND DEVELOPMENTISM

Alvaro Sierra Valls

1. Introduction
2. Dictatorships and economy
- Economic bases of dictatorships
3. Consequences of Civil War
- Autarchy: economy, society and international framework
4. The growth period
- Tecnocracy and aperturism
- Developmentalism: social changes, politicalpermanence
5. Transition to democracy: a brief note
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography

1. Introduction

To study the main subject in this work, economic politics during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, requires looking back, in my opinion, to several moments in the history of this country that affected deeply the economy during the second half of the XXº century, and of course, to theinternational framework in the first part of the century.
The first determining moment are the protectionist policies that european countries, also Spain, carried out in the first third of the twentieth century: Spain was then and will be until the sixties a rural and agricultural country, and the cost reduction on transports and trading made cheaper to supply the spanish coast with americancereals than with the grain produced in the inland. Also, the rising textil industry in Catalonia was affected by the strong international competitivity, wich produced an association between landowners and industrials that made the goverment fell before the pressure and rose the custom taxes. This, plus the drop on foreign investment till the 1880’s and the lost of the last colonies, were theresposibles of the empowering of the economy based on a “national way”, with the support of new protectionist laws. Mining and the first industrial attempts in Basque Country contribude, as well as I World War –conflict that allowed the new born middle class to recover control over the main activities, untill then in hands of foreigner companies, as well as public debt, and gave strength to the nationalindustry too by the manufacturing of goods for the countries in the conflict- to the consolidation of spanish economy.
This protectionist bases were applied all over Europe, first in the beginning of the century, and later, after the fall of capital markets and the 1929 crisis: tariff protection policies were established in Belgium, France and Great Britain, were surprisingly free trading wasabandoned and the capability of the Empire as supplier of himself, highly promoted. Meanwhile, “schachtianism” in Germany reduced trading by bilateral treats with other European countries.
Now we arrived the other determining moment for spanish economy in the second half of the XXº century: the “advent of the Republic” and the Civil War.
Spain was in the thirties still an agricultural countrywhere industry settled in Basque Country, Madrid and Catalonia, have no weight in the national economy. The social and political plurality, and division, that came with the new system was ended by the right-handed putsch of several military men that led to the Civil War: after that, the rural, bad communicated, non-industrialized per se country, was completely devastated and economically sunken. Thisis our starting point.

2. Dictatorships and economy
There are some common features in authoritarism and totalitarism about socio-economic topics: planification and racism are some of the most used in the economic ground, as well as nationalism against liberalism, banning or at least suspicion against foreigner products, corporativism and increasement of natality.

* Economic bases ondictatorships
As we said, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes or governments are distinguished, on economic topics, by some tendencies. I’ll describe or explain which ones I consider most important based on commonalities with Francisco Franco’s regimen.
The main property on fascist economies should be dirigism, viewed not just as the imposition of the economical policies, the control of...