Gracias David for your very balanced analysis of the Spanish political economy during the Franco times!
Interestingly, there are many similarities between the development policy of Franco and the Chinese policies that started later under Deng.
Domestically, the Spanish Socialist Party PSOE is trying with all its power to resurrect Franco (in a symbolic way, I mean) in order to paint themselves as the valiant fighters against fascism. Which is intriguing in itself because PSOE is now in the Government so one might think that PSOE would be already perfectly positioned to fight any extremist tendencies...
Anyway, such maneuvers might create blowback as in people starting to ask where exactly was the PSOE during its "40 years of vacation" during the Franco times and why did the PSOE accept to de-industrialize Spain in return to being accepted into the EEC (later EU)....
Also, there's another great meme from the old timers that encapsulates well life under the dictatorship: "Contra Franco vivíamos mejor" -"we lived better while (fighting) against Franco".
I recently saw an online meme that I'll paraphrase as "It's WHAT a ruler does for his people that matters, not HOW he does it."
This essay is very interesting and informative. I would be intrigued to see a similar analysis of those monarchies of Europe on which republics were imposed by the Treaty of Versailes.
As an aside, France has a strong, and growing, undercurrent of Royalism, particularly South of the Loire, where many communities pointedly boycott Bastille Day, and the display of the republican Tricoleur other than on government buildings is taken as an affront. Once again, "It's the economy, Stupid!"
Even a constitutional monarchy is better than no monarchy. Spain would have disintegrated three times already in the last 50 years if not for the monarchy. It's a pretty strong basis for a country and, like Davila observed, the biggest defect of democracy is that it won't allow nature to provide us with a good ruler, by sheer chance, every few generations or so.
Economic miracles had the unerring habit of occurring in locations directly bordering, US hegemonic competitors. West Germany, Japan, South Korea. Economic miracles never happened in places already controlled or in no danger of being lost to US control / influence. United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands.
It is impossible to use purely economic data in the analysis of a country's history without a wider appreciation of what is influencing the economic landscape of the time (Cuba during 60 years of US embargo).
EU development, including the development of individual nation states has been and continues to be driven by US & Nato interests, until they collectively or individually come to terms with this, the future for Spain as well as the rest of the EU & UK, remains bleak.
But generally it is what a country does internally rather than externally that matters. The focus on trade liberalization or even export led economies is less important, in my opinion, that is fine internally. One of the common themes in most of the Asian economies under U.S. hegemony is what the U.S. forced upon them: land reform and private markets that game the lower class and merchants a chance to build. This was done explicitly to forestall the appeal of a land-based popular communist insurgency. What is crippling with the EU is not only its pathetic posture vis-a-vis the Great Powers of US, Russia, and China but the lack of economic freedom and economic opportunities internally; which have now carried into lack of political freedoms. Europe has 800 million people; if they could ever prune the bureaucracy and allow personal property and freedom of economic opportunity, they would boom….
I had the good fortune of studying Spanish in the '70s. My teachers liked to tell us things they found odd about the Franco regime. This was over by the time I went to Spain to study in 1979. I never got much into political discussions with the locals, but I was aware that Franco was hated, but I noticed that the condemnations of him were devoid of specificity, particulaly about anything that was not by then ancient history.
The Spain of 1979 I saw was poor relative to the US, but it was very middle class. While poor campesinos were still easy enough to find, the rich were scarce, and there wasn't a particularly visible upper middle class, as there was in the US. The country was safe and seemingly well-run. In the late 90s I visited Russia and China. They were not nearly as well run as 1979 Spain, nor were the people as seemingly happy.
I personally would disagree with your classification of Franco as a "fascist dictator." Dictator yes, but he wasn't ideologically obsessive enough to be a true fascist by my estimation. He was a pragmatic man, and that was a big part of the success of his regime.
true, the problem is that most European Fascist states (Italy, Romania, Hungary, etc) worked fairly similarly, at least in a general sense. If they were Fascist, Franco had to be Fascist too.
My defense of Mr Franco is always that in the context of the civil war it wasn't a choice between Franquismo and a well functioning liberal democracy but rather between the former and some form of communism
If you define anything we've seen in the last 100 years a liberal democracy, I suppose. I think the Depression killed any aspirations to same. More like 'veiled fascism lite' in the US case.
Thanks for the article. I dont know if you follow the Spanish youtube "Juan Ramon Rallo" but he discussed the exact economic points of the Franquismo, and how the current illiberal president is resurrecting him as a strawman to point at as to deflate his current corruption and failures.
I think overall this article could not be published in Spain currently because of the crisp political situation, I have sometimes tried to objectively discuss Franco amongst my peers in the Gen Z but the conversation either veers into "Ojala levantase la cabeza para librarnos de estos rojos" or "Fascista, Fascista", so currently young people are even more radicalized for or against him. Which is crazy because the man is dead, lets move on.
I find it rather ironic to see a more balanced and nuanced analisis in English than it could ever happen in Spanish. And reading about him I found him more pragmatic and smart than I thought, despite having a hate for the Basques and Catalonians (he purged the Carlists) he still saw their entrepreneurship and invested heavily into them in his second term in order to increase industrial production which gave leg to many famous companies like Fagor and the whole "tejido industrial catalan".
For Franco we have 2 things to thank, no more Carlists and the dwindling middle class.
En España es imposible hablar con ninguna honestidad sobre el legado y los éxitos franquistas, pero es fácil de ver cuando haces cualquier tipo de comparación histórica, con cualquier régimen de la época o con cualquier régimen de la historia española.
El problema con Franco viene principalmente del hecho que, hay 2 Francos. El Franco de la post-guerra y el Franco de la transicion (lo que en tus gráficos describen como Franqusimo I y II).
El Franco I es el monstruo de la pelicula, el que fusilo los rojos, el que instauro la Falange y la Autarquía y el que oprimio las minorias linguisticas. Y después tienes a Franco II que instauro politicas liberales con los Chicago Boys, abrio mas el país, relajo un poco la represion y preparo la transicion dejando una clase media estable.
Cuando intentas hablar de Franco II la gente aun se ciñe a hablar de Franco I. En nada ayuda que el PSOE/Sanchez intenta mantener Franco como un zombie intelectual para ganar votos.
I've heard something like this, and I think Stanley Payne actually talked about it in his history? Nice to see Fernandez actually do the math though. I always wondered how fascism would do if it was left to run for a few decades. I figured capitalism would do better than socialism, all else equal, but I guess this as close as we're going to get. (Unless you count post-Mao China.)
Early on, worse than that. Later, from the 1950s, rather moderate, so that Spain socially and such wasn't all that different from, say, Italy, in the 60s and 70s. I will soon write a piece about it.
Wow, I was born way before you David but I must say this, had Kamala been elected president, I would have been able to say, "I am now dead in fascist America and America is dead". Wow. Under the Harris-Biden regime, Franco coulda been a cousin to them. Dios mio. Thank you for sharing.
Great question. Mostly it was a set of pro-market reforms to liberalize sectors and investments, remove price controls and the like. It symbolized the end of an early stage with a focus on industrial policy, optimizing machinery production and such, towards more efficiency and consumer spending. Not a revolution by any means, but sort of a change of guard.
Gracias David for your very balanced analysis of the Spanish political economy during the Franco times!
Interestingly, there are many similarities between the development policy of Franco and the Chinese policies that started later under Deng.
Domestically, the Spanish Socialist Party PSOE is trying with all its power to resurrect Franco (in a symbolic way, I mean) in order to paint themselves as the valiant fighters against fascism. Which is intriguing in itself because PSOE is now in the Government so one might think that PSOE would be already perfectly positioned to fight any extremist tendencies...
Anyway, such maneuvers might create blowback as in people starting to ask where exactly was the PSOE during its "40 years of vacation" during the Franco times and why did the PSOE accept to de-industrialize Spain in return to being accepted into the EEC (later EU)....
Also, there's another great meme from the old timers that encapsulates well life under the dictatorship: "Contra Franco vivíamos mejor" -"we lived better while (fighting) against Franco".
I recently saw an online meme that I'll paraphrase as "It's WHAT a ruler does for his people that matters, not HOW he does it."
This essay is very interesting and informative. I would be intrigued to see a similar analysis of those monarchies of Europe on which republics were imposed by the Treaty of Versailes.
As an aside, France has a strong, and growing, undercurrent of Royalism, particularly South of the Loire, where many communities pointedly boycott Bastille Day, and the display of the republican Tricoleur other than on government buildings is taken as an affront. Once again, "It's the economy, Stupid!"
Even a constitutional monarchy is better than no monarchy. Spain would have disintegrated three times already in the last 50 years if not for the monarchy. It's a pretty strong basis for a country and, like Davila observed, the biggest defect of democracy is that it won't allow nature to provide us with a good ruler, by sheer chance, every few generations or so.
Economic miracles had the unerring habit of occurring in locations directly bordering, US hegemonic competitors. West Germany, Japan, South Korea. Economic miracles never happened in places already controlled or in no danger of being lost to US control / influence. United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands.
It is impossible to use purely economic data in the analysis of a country's history without a wider appreciation of what is influencing the economic landscape of the time (Cuba during 60 years of US embargo).
EU development, including the development of individual nation states has been and continues to be driven by US & Nato interests, until they collectively or individually come to terms with this, the future for Spain as well as the rest of the EU & UK, remains bleak.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
But generally it is what a country does internally rather than externally that matters. The focus on trade liberalization or even export led economies is less important, in my opinion, that is fine internally. One of the common themes in most of the Asian economies under U.S. hegemony is what the U.S. forced upon them: land reform and private markets that game the lower class and merchants a chance to build. This was done explicitly to forestall the appeal of a land-based popular communist insurgency. What is crippling with the EU is not only its pathetic posture vis-a-vis the Great Powers of US, Russia, and China but the lack of economic freedom and economic opportunities internally; which have now carried into lack of political freedoms. Europe has 800 million people; if they could ever prune the bureaucracy and allow personal property and freedom of economic opportunity, they would boom….
I had the good fortune of studying Spanish in the '70s. My teachers liked to tell us things they found odd about the Franco regime. This was over by the time I went to Spain to study in 1979. I never got much into political discussions with the locals, but I was aware that Franco was hated, but I noticed that the condemnations of him were devoid of specificity, particulaly about anything that was not by then ancient history.
The Spain of 1979 I saw was poor relative to the US, but it was very middle class. While poor campesinos were still easy enough to find, the rich were scarce, and there wasn't a particularly visible upper middle class, as there was in the US. The country was safe and seemingly well-run. In the late 90s I visited Russia and China. They were not nearly as well run as 1979 Spain, nor were the people as seemingly happy.
I personally would disagree with your classification of Franco as a "fascist dictator." Dictator yes, but he wasn't ideologically obsessive enough to be a true fascist by my estimation. He was a pragmatic man, and that was a big part of the success of his regime.
true, the problem is that most European Fascist states (Italy, Romania, Hungary, etc) worked fairly similarly, at least in a general sense. If they were Fascist, Franco had to be Fascist too.
My defense of Mr Franco is always that in the context of the civil war it wasn't a choice between Franquismo and a well functioning liberal democracy but rather between the former and some form of communism
Francoism outperformed liberal democracy too
If you define anything we've seen in the last 100 years a liberal democracy, I suppose. I think the Depression killed any aspirations to same. More like 'veiled fascism lite' in the US case.
Thanks for the article. I dont know if you follow the Spanish youtube "Juan Ramon Rallo" but he discussed the exact economic points of the Franquismo, and how the current illiberal president is resurrecting him as a strawman to point at as to deflate his current corruption and failures.
I think overall this article could not be published in Spain currently because of the crisp political situation, I have sometimes tried to objectively discuss Franco amongst my peers in the Gen Z but the conversation either veers into "Ojala levantase la cabeza para librarnos de estos rojos" or "Fascista, Fascista", so currently young people are even more radicalized for or against him. Which is crazy because the man is dead, lets move on.
I find it rather ironic to see a more balanced and nuanced analisis in English than it could ever happen in Spanish. And reading about him I found him more pragmatic and smart than I thought, despite having a hate for the Basques and Catalonians (he purged the Carlists) he still saw their entrepreneurship and invested heavily into them in his second term in order to increase industrial production which gave leg to many famous companies like Fagor and the whole "tejido industrial catalan".
For Franco we have 2 things to thank, no more Carlists and the dwindling middle class.
En España es imposible hablar con ninguna honestidad sobre el legado y los éxitos franquistas, pero es fácil de ver cuando haces cualquier tipo de comparación histórica, con cualquier régimen de la época o con cualquier régimen de la historia española.
El problema con Franco viene principalmente del hecho que, hay 2 Francos. El Franco de la post-guerra y el Franco de la transicion (lo que en tus gráficos describen como Franqusimo I y II).
El Franco I es el monstruo de la pelicula, el que fusilo los rojos, el que instauro la Falange y la Autarquía y el que oprimio las minorias linguisticas. Y después tienes a Franco II que instauro politicas liberales con los Chicago Boys, abrio mas el país, relajo un poco la represion y preparo la transicion dejando una clase media estable.
Cuando intentas hablar de Franco II la gente aun se ciñe a hablar de Franco I. En nada ayuda que el PSOE/Sanchez intenta mantener Franco como un zombie intelectual para ganar votos.
I've heard something like this, and I think Stanley Payne actually talked about it in his history? Nice to see Fernandez actually do the math though. I always wondered how fascism would do if it was left to run for a few decades. I figured capitalism would do better than socialism, all else equal, but I guess this as close as we're going to get. (Unless you count post-Mao China.)
P.S. Hitler was Austrian. ;)
tl;dr but I got the gist. Thanks. I don't claim to know anything about Franco-era Spain, but I'm pretty sure the left-inspired critiques are wrong.
Would it be accurate to say that if you stayed out of politics, Franco left you alone? Or was it more intrusive than that?
Early on, worse than that. Later, from the 1950s, rather moderate, so that Spain socially and such wasn't all that different from, say, Italy, in the 60s and 70s. I will soon write a piece about it.
Wow, I was born way before you David but I must say this, had Kamala been elected president, I would have been able to say, "I am now dead in fascist America and America is dead". Wow. Under the Harris-Biden regime, Franco coulda been a cousin to them. Dios mio. Thank you for sharing.
Interesting article.
I would like to hear more about why “ all historians of 20th century Spain have the year of 1959 marked as a milestone for pro-market reforms.”
What specific reforms were implemented?
Great question. Mostly it was a set of pro-market reforms to liberalize sectors and investments, remove price controls and the like. It symbolized the end of an early stage with a focus on industrial policy, optimizing machinery production and such, towards more efficiency and consumer spending. Not a revolution by any means, but sort of a change of guard.
"Generalissimo Franco is still dead..."
I don't care about your poor literacy. It's clear that you're incapable of educated discussion, so hereby you're banned for ever. Go love yourself.
Thank you for moderating a civil conversation.