The Stability and Consolidation of the Francoist Regime. The Case of Eastern Andalusia, 1936–1950 (original) (raw)
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The Stability and Consolidation of the Francoist Regime. The case of Eastern Andalusia, 1936-50
2011
The stabilisation and longevity of Franco’s regime can be explained by the interpenetration of society and the institutions of the ‘New State’ in three overlapping areas: firstly, in the sphere of the shared culture of the community of civil war victors; secondly, through repression, based on the decisive collaboration of those supporting Francoism, which cut short any possible opposition; thirdly, in the socio-economic sphere, where those making up the groups supporting the ‘New State’ would see their personal interests fulfilled. At the same time, the defeated would be ensnared in a maze of misery and silence, abandoning any political concerns and concentrating instead on survival. Accordingly, the regime proved able to win support from a broad range of social groups while also eliminating any signs of opposition.
Spain Under Franco: The Changing Character of an Authoritarian Regime *
European Journal of Political Research, 1976
The last of the traditional counter-revolutionary dictatorships in l u r o p e and the first authoritarian technocratic regime which claims t o reconcile economic development with a tight social control, the many-sided dictatorship of General Franco covers a complex network of varied and a t times contradictory social and ideological elements which form a sort of compendium of contemporary conservative authoritarianisms. It is a pity that serious studies of such a regime are so rare, despite, its duration. The question remains whether any fundamental study of Francoist Spain exists. ho-one has as yet examined methodically the application to Spain of the Marxist concept of Honapartism or Gramsci's notion of Caesarism, nor even explored t o the full the term fascism which is bandied about at random. It is in fact the functionalist analyses which are the most reliable and systematic of the existing studies; there is but a single researcher, Juan J. Linz, who can take the credit for this.
The endurance of Francoist myths in democratic Spain
International Journal of Iberian Studies, 2012
The endurance of Francoist myths in democratic spain inTroducTion The Republic, the civil war and the Francoist dictatorship occupy 44 years of the Spanish twentieth century. It is impossible to deal with contemporary Spanish history without dealing with them. Today's Spain, 35 years after Franco's death, remains fundamentally shaped by our historical heritage but also by the representations that Spanish society has of our immediate past. My reflections will be in three parts. In the first part, I shall identify twelve of the more resilient Francoist myths. They are the mainstay of the Francoist canon about the civil war and its consequences. In the second part, I shall comment on what research undertaken by three generations of mainly Spanish critical historians has shown. In the final part, I shall mention some of the major reasons why a neo-Francoist inspired version of the past is still circulating.
REVISTA CONVERGÊNCIA CRÍTICA, v. 2, n. 3 (2013), Dossiê Direitos Humanos
The title of this paper is only one of the theses elaborated in my PhD-Project about the role of the antifrancoist social movements in Barcelona in the transition to democracy in the 1970s. Yet, it is a central thesis. It points out that the origins of democratic civil society in Catalonia and also in the other parts of Spain can be found in the antifrancoist part of the population. This kind of civil society is necessary to make democracy live and sustainable. The mental key to this new democratic civil society under dictatorial rule was the identity construction of being a victim of this regime. This conviction led to the desire to live in a democracy, to enjoy democratic freedoms and rights. It created an elevated disposition to struggle for this democracy by peaceful mobilization and conquering spaces for the exercise of democracy and its liberties. This is a point of view which is not shared by all scholars. The partisans of the “political opportunity structure” approach argue in he case of Spain, that the upcoming democratic civil society was a result of the political or economic liberalization of the regime in the 1960s, which produced a vital civil society which was transformed into a specific democratic civil society by the democratic reforms of the regime elite. This paper points out that opportunity might make the thief, but not democrats. Although this new political opportunity structure was very favorable for the democratic consciousness building by the antifrancoists, it was not its origin. The origins must be searched in the identity of the activists, an identity which was reproduced and extended to bigger parts of the Spanish and Catalan population. This was a development which was observed critically by the regime and was often answered by hard repression. By no means did the regime provoke this willingly. To analyse the cognitive processes which took part during this identity construction the author applies the frame analysis approach which originally was developed in the field of communication science. Later the sociolgists Benford and Snow introduced this approach to the field of Social Movement Studies. This approach offers a useful tool box to depict cognitive argumentation and identity structures which lead to collective actions, how these cognitive frames are transformed to gain more support or how they are changed by new supporting groups of a social movement, the so called framing.
The postwar years in Spain were little more than the perpetuation of the Civil War on an ideological terrain, as the Franco Regime consistently vilified the memory of the Second Republic and remorselessly persecuted the defeated Republicans. In fact, nationalist diatribes against communism and its attendant ills of separatism and laicism were invariably expounded in medical terminology, referring as they did to the bcancerQ and bvirusQ which had devastated the nation during the Civil War. This empirically unverifiable theory sustained that a large scale extermination (the Civil War) had to be carried out to rid Spain of this bvirusQ thus preempt the contagion of this fervently Catholic and patriotic nation. Horkheimer affirms that the family is the microcosm of the fascist state, as the relationship between siblings and parents replicates the obedience of the citizen to the fascist state. As Republican traits were at antipodes to the prescribed national attributes, the Francoist State sought to destroy the Republican family by a myriad of measures such as the inculcation of a zealous National Catholicism in their children, which in turn precipitated both selfhatred and the children's outright rejection of their parents. However, the social persecution of the defeated transcended indoctrination: in the postwar years, the horrendousness of life for the Republicans was compounded by the State's quasi reconversion policy, which resulted in Republican children being forcibly removed from their homes, and been adopted by pro-Francoist families, or in many cases, rehoused by religious orders which, within a decade, witnessed a huge increase in the number of supposed orphans becoming seminarists. In this article, I intend to elaborate on both the means by which the Francoist State eradicated the Republican family, and its long-term consequences.