In any case, Franco achieved his greatest diplomatic triumphs in 1953. In August of that year, the long-awaited Concordat with the Vatican, which endorsed the incontestable Catholic and confessional nature of the regime, was signed in Madrid. A month later, in September, Franco signed bilateral agreements with the United States that reintegrated Spain into the Western defence system with the installation of several US military bases on Spanish soil.134 As Franco rightly said on 1 October 1953, in his speech at the Fiesta del Caudillo, it was ‘a time of plenty for our foreign policy’.135 In private he was no less sparing in giving full rein to his satisfaction. After signing the agreements for the bases, he was heard to comment, ‘At last I have won the Civil War.’136 He had sound reason to celebrate because, from then on, no fundamental danger called into question his command and comprehensive authority in Spain nor his diplomatic recognition in the West, albeit as a minor partner and despised for his political structure and recent past.
Regardless, by then, his official life was already strictly regulated except on rare occasions: on Tuesdays he held military audiences; on Wednesdays, civil hearings; on Thursdays he worked with Admiral Carrero Blanco and his military and private secretaries in addition to receiving credentials from ambassadors; on Fridays he presided over the regular meeting of the Council of Ministers. The rest of the week he rested and devoted time to his hobbies and family life.137
A Long Reign Without a Crown
From the mid-1950s, Franco, firm in his position and recognized as supreme and final arbitrator for all the Francoist political ‘families’ (Falangists, Carlists, Catholics, monarchists and the military), lived perhaps the happiest and calmest stage of his long life as Caudillo. A palpable demonstration of the security of Franco both domestically and internationally was the increase in the amount of time he devoted to leisure and the enjoyment of his favourite sports. These pastimes did not include (nor for Doña Carmen) either music (light or classical), literature, dance, theatre, opera, poetry or the visual arts in general (except for a brief flirtation with oil painting: still life, landscapes and some family portraits). The complete absence of a personal library in the private apartments of the Franco family in the palace of El Pardo gives an idea of the dominant cultural hobbies and the insular, almost provincial atmosphere prevailing there. Pilar Franco Bahamonde, who was invited to El Pardo for lunch once a week or fortnightly, would remember that her brother allowed himself ‘very few distractions: golf, fishing, hunting. He is very fond of bullfighting, but I think he likes football the most.’138
Aside from these sports, Franco regularly played tennis (until prevented by old age) and golf. He continued with his long discussions with friends, preferably those from the military, who also served as companions and opponents in card games (mus and tresillo) and dominoes.139 Franco also maintained his fondness (shared by his wife) for watching movies in the lounge of El Pardo (normally on Saturday and Sunday afternoons) and listening to daily radio programmes (and later television once it started broadcasting in 1956).
Around the early 1950s, as a result of internal institutional changes and international rehabilitation, Franco’s regime was fully consolidated. However, the economic situation was still terrible due to the failure of autarky, a policy that he still stubbornly followed. In 1950 all economic indicators remained below or at the same levels as those prior to the Civil War. In that year, the income per capita in Spain ($694 in 1970) was even lower than it had been in 1940 ($746) and had still not exceeded that of 1930 ($798).140 Consequently, Spain was one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in Europe (together with Greece and Portugal) and remained in a state of economic prostration that the devastated Western combatants of World War II (including Italy and Germany) had already overcome. Its social welfare and public consumption levels were even lower than some Latin American countries. At the beginning of 1951, a civil governor of the regime (the supreme authority in a province) witnessed this with regret, ‘We must recognize clearly that there is hunger, unrest and discontent.’141
Seeing the end of Spain’s isolationism and the need to alter the course of the autarky policy, Franco changed his government in July 1951. The ministerial reshuffle was very broad, although the character of the ‘coalition team’ was still predominantly military and Catholic (apart from Martín Artajo, Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez, former ambassador to Rome, as education minister, and Gabriel Arias Salgado as minister of information and tourism).
The most notable feature of the new cabinet was the promotion to the post of Cabinet secretary of Carrero Blanco, who was already ‘the eminence gris of the regime’, an action justified to him by Franco on the basis that it would avoid Franco ‘having to repeat [to him] the proceedings of the Council [of Ministers] afterwards’.142 The renewed National Catholic majority at the heart of the regime, along with the monarchist institutionalization sui generis, increased the frustration of the Falangist ‘family’ and led to growing friction between it and the remaining political forces. The Falangists were particularly critical of the policy of controlled cultural and university ‘liberalization’ that Ruiz-Giménez would undertake. The rivalry between the Falange and political Catholicism in the 1950s replaced the previous rivalry between Falangists and the military-monarchist bloc.
Although aware of the intensity of the internal friction in his Cabinet, Franco always refused to relegate the Falange entirely (and even less to dissolve it), as the Catholics – with the support of other political forces and sectors of the army – wanted. On the contrary, the Falange was kept in power because it served as a counterweight to monarchist and Catholic demands, provided ‘service personnel’ for the public administration and trade union bureaucracy and was the most faithful of the available forces since it had no basis for its existence other than its loyalty to the Caudillo. As Franco said to Martín Artajo in the critical moments of 1945 when asked for the ‘displacement of the Falange’, it was ‘an effective tool’ (‘They warn me of dangers’), that ‘educated opinion and organized forces’ (‘I see it on my travels’), and served as a shield from criticism (‘They are blamed for the mistakes of the government’).143 For that reason, in October 1953, just after having signed the Concordat and agreements with the United States, and in one of his Solomon-like judgements of political balance, Franco allowed in Madrid the first (and only) National Congress of FET and the JONS, despite criticism from some ministers who regarded it as ‘madness to give this sense of revitalization of the Falange’.144
The tension that grew between Falangists and Catholic aperturistas (who were open to change) culminated in February 1956 with serious riots at the University of Madrid. Their origin was in the new generation of university students’ growing dissatisfaction with rigid official control and the overwhelming lack of critical intellectual freedom in higher education. Clashes between students and Falangists precipitated a political and ministerial crisis of great significance. On 10 February, for the first time, Franco ordered the suspension of several articles of the Fuero de los Españoles, the closure of the University of Madrid and the arrest of several student and intellectual leaders. The Caudillo considered that ‘the university is now like a regiment without sergeants’ and it was necessary to impose discipline urgently.145 The apparent bankruptcy of public order resulted in the sacking of Ruiz-Giménez, considered ‘guilty’ of the disturbances, and the secretary general of the Falange, accused of being unable to control its members. However, the Caudillo could not settle the internal tensions in his regime that the crisis of February 1956 had brought to light.
Indeed, as a result of the relaxation of autarky measures and US financial aid, the 1951–7 period was ‘the first time in the Spanish postwar period when there was significant growth’ of economic activity, together with ‘a rapid advance of the industrial sector compared to agriculture’.146 In just a decade, the income per capita of the country grew from $694 in 1950 to $1,042 in 1960, while the industrial production index (base 100 in 1929) jumped
from 106.8 to 203.6 between 1950 and 1960.147 This renewed economic activity had allowed an exultant Franco to end the much-hated rationing in June 1952. However, the worrying reversal of that process of growth, for which US aid could never compensate, was brought about by a growing inflationary trend, aggravated by a worsening of the balance of trade and a lack of means of international payments that would reach distressing conclusion in 1957. By then, the expectation of financial bankruptcy meant it was essential to make profound economic changes that would bring a definitive end to autarky and fully open the Spanish economy to the outside world.
The quick Cabinet reshuffle approved by Franco in February 1956 was an emergency solution to a major crisis, due both to its impact on public order and its institutional implications. In turn, the failure of successive attempts to choose between a Catholic and Falangist profile created the need to initiate a third institutional and political-economic alternative. The change was made in a progressively worsening international context due to the process of decolonization that was underway. Just a month after the resolution of the ministerial crisis, Franco had to bury his Africanista dreams after the unexpected decision of France to grant independence to Morocco. On 7 April 1956 Franco recognized Mohammed V as king and without conditions ceded him the Spanish Protectorate.
The abandonment of Morocco coincided with a serious deterioration of the economic situation that called into question the precarious political balance between autarky and liberalization which had hardly managed to reach the macroeconomic prewar levels. By the middle of 1957 the Spanish economy was at an impasse. Inflation had risen by 11 per cent in that year, and would rise another 11 per cent the next and another 5.5 per cent by June 1959. At the same time, financial strangulation led to an accelerated reduction of currency so that by the end of 1957 there were hardly any reserves left. As a result, the spectre of the suspension of foreign payments was obvious and the risk of financial bankruptcy a very real possibility.148
Faced with the dual crisis of political paralysis and economic bankruptcy, Franco was forced to carry out profound ministerial changes postponed from the previous reshuffle. At the end of February 1957, he appointed a new government which saw the final decline of the Falange and a commitment to the alternative political-economic programme sponsored by Carrero Blanco. Despite the presence of the usual military, Catholic and Falangist quotas, the new stars of the Cabinet were economists belonging to the Catholic Opus Dei who formed a team of so-called ‘technocrats’.149 Their spectacular rise was due to the strong support of Carrero Blanco, who largely shared their religious fundamentalism and had them implement his programme of institutionalization, economic liberalization and international openness. Indeed, the new government in February 1957, under the direction of Carrero Blanco and with the encouragement of the technocrats, thus embarked on a three-part programme to improve the effectiveness of state administration, complete the institutional profile of the regime under the formula of a traditional monarchy (with a successor included in pectore), and promote economic reform to put an end to the vestiges of interventionist autarky, instead opting for growth based on an opening to the outside world and the primacy of free private enterprise.
The administrative reform measures were to overcome the traditional lack of coordination and the fragmentation of the state bureaucratic apparatus in Spain. Although Franco was extremely reluctant (delaying the completion of the reform until the approval of the Ley Orgánica del Estado (the Organic Law of the State or constitution) in 1967), the set of measures taken meant, with all its flaws, the implementation of a state network across the whole of Spain, a uniform extension of general functions and the emergence of a bureaucracy recruited exclusively on merit and not politics.
In its political dimension, Carrero Blanco’s programme was to continue the institutionalization of Francoism in a traditional, monarchist and Catholic sense with the succession issue resolved in favour of Prince Juan Carlos. Things were slower than expected because the Caudillo delayed the monarchical succession as much as he could, although he had already ruled out Don Juan and set his sights on the young Prince. As he confessed to his cousin and assistant at that time: ‘I have already said on different occasions and political events that while I have health and physical and mental faculties I will not give up the leadership of the state.’150
The third aspect of the political programme hosted by Carrero Blanco and profiled by the technocrat ministers was to undertake economic reform which exceeded the exhausted autarky-interventionist model, avoided financial bankruptcy and laid the foundations for productive growth at least similar to what was starting to happen in Western Europe (evident from March 1957, following the establishment of the European Economic Community). The genesis of the subsequent Plan de Estabilización y Liberalización (Plan for Stabilization and Liberalization) approved on 21 July 1959 was haphazard and not without political complications. In particular, Franco was very reluctant to recognize the failure of autarky (‘things were not so bad’) and harboured serious doubts about the potential political effects of the recommended economic openness. As Carrero Blanco noted, the Caudillo was ‘suspicious’ of the new direction in economic policy, which he probably did not understand in all its complexity: ‘I’m turning into a communist.’151 Franco finally accepted the urgent need for change when his technocrat ministers explained to him, not the origins, but the hypothetical outcome of his obstinate hesitancy: ‘General, if we have to return to ration cards, what will we do if the orange harvest is hit by frost?’ Faced with that frightening possibility, the Caudillo relented and approved the stabilizing and liberalizing measures. He did not do so willingly, but out of forced pragmatism: ‘He is not happy; he is deeply suspicious,’ confessed Carrero Blanco to his main technocrat adviser, the lawyer Laureano López Rodó.152
The implementation of the Plan de Estabilización of 1959 meant a profound change of economic course in the evolution of the Franco regime. Several measures (budgetary rigour, credit restrictions, devaluation of the peseta, an end to state interventionism, a salary freeze and the opening of the Spanish economy abroad) laid the foundations for spectacular economic growth from 1960 which would radically transform Spanish society. Thus, paradoxically, the political regime that had for 20 years interrupted the process of economic and social modernization which had been initiated in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century, became its new advocate and sponsor. Consequently, the new phase of productive modernization and socio-professional diversification would be developed and credit taken for it by a static political system, alien and unaffected by such profound evolution. Very soon, that increasing dysfunction between static political structures and dynamic socio-economic realities would create serious internal tensions in the country. Economic development would not only give new strength and legitimacy to the Franco regime in the short term – it would also generate deeply discordant social and cultural conditions within an anachronistic political system unprepared for its own socio-economic reality and success.
Indeed, after a brief initial recession, the implementation of the Plan de Estabilización achieved its basic objectives – avoidance of the danger of financial bankruptcy and recovery of foreign-exchange reserves. After that, in line with the expansion in the rest of the Western economies, Spain’s economy entered a stage of unprecedented development, the so-called ‘Spanish economic miracle’, with annual growth of over 7 per cent between 1960 and 1970 that was only interrupted by the international economic crisis of 1973. As a result of the sustained expansion, the Spanish economic structure underwent a remarkable change between 1960 and 1970: Spain ceased to be a predominantly agrarian country and became fully industrialized with a diversified and buoyant service sector.153 The intense process of development was the combined result of the new economic policy of liberalization and three concurrent exogenous factors: the large investments of foreign capital (whose volume multiplied by 15 between 1960 and 1972, with the US as the main investor); substantial
revenues from mass tourism (between 1960 and 1973 the number of tourists went from 6 to 34.5 million, a figure equal to that the population of Spain); and the capital transfers from waves of emigrants which alleviated domestic unemployment and eased the balance of payments (between 1960 and 1972 emigration abroad exceeded 100,000 people per year, with a total of at least 843,000 permanent emigrants and a similar number of semi-permanent or temporary emigrants).154
The social effects caused by the rapid economic growth soon became apparent. The Spanish population grew during the 1960s at the fastest rate in its history, from 30.4 million in 1960 to 35.4 in 1975. The composition of the active population underwent a similarly radical change: the percentage of the population employed in agriculture decreased from 42 per cent in 1960 to 22.8 per cent in 1970, while during this decade the industrial population rose from 31 per cent to 38.4 per cent and those occupied in the service sector from 27 per cent to 34.1 per cent.155 The Spain of the industrial and services boom was also the Spain of intense urbanization through a massive depopulation of the countryside. In a decade the country had more than half of its inhabitants residing in cities (with Madrid exceeding 3 million inhabitants and Barcelona close to 2 million). The corollary was the growth of an industrial and services working class and its gradual transformation during the decade into an increasingly qualified and specialized workforce. While economic development precipitated this change at the heart of the working class, it also reinforced and consolidated a much-diversified middle class that swelled and renewed the intermediate sections of Spanish society. Even the upper classes were affected by economic change; the loss of important agriculture meant the collapse of the hegemony of the landowning oligarchy within the ruling elite and its replacement by new dominant forces from the expanding financial capital sector and the industrial and commercial bourgeoisies.156
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