Transcript Spanish Politics and Society

Francoism
HESP - University of Chicago
Raimundo Viejo Viñas
Office 20.182
www.raimundoviejo.info
[email protected]
Franco’s political regime
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Political scientists distinguish democracies and undemocratic
regimes or autocracies.
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In autocratic regimes there is no rule of law
Political authorities are not elected in free elections
There are not civil liberties, and different political ideas are
pursued by the State
Undemocratic political regimes can be classified into three
types:
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Totalitarian, that seeks the extermination of any alternative to the
regime
Authoritarian, that represses the alternatives and has a limited
internal pluralism
Sultanates, that is owned by the dictator and/or a small elite.
Franco’s political regime
 The political regime of dictator Francisco
Franco (Francoism) was an undemocratic
regime or autocracy.
 During its first years, after the Spanish Civil
War (1936-1939), Franco’s regime was a
totalitarian autocracy.
 Republican opposition was persecuted,
imprisoned and executed
 Falange became the single, totalitarian party
 Political rights and civil liberties were suppressed
Franco’s political regime
 In the late fifties and sixties Francoism
transited from a totalitarian into an
authoritarian regime.
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In the context of the Cold War (after the defeat of Hitler
and Mussolini), Falange lost its power as single party.
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Franco became the arbitrator between the various "political
families" of the regime: falangistas, juancarlistas, opus...
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They increased due process, without actually being a state
of right.
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Fraga’s Ley de Prensa partially increased freedom of speech
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 Three major powers (the so-called poderes fácticos)
dominated political life during Franco’s dictatorship
 The military
 The Catholich Church
 The mass media
 While the military and the Catholic Church were
centralised institutions involved in the political regime
from the very beginning, the mass media gained
political influence after the 1950s
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 Since the Spanish Empire, the army has a
long history of political intervention in
public life.
 Several factors explain such an
authoritarian interventionism:
 Macrocephaly (too many officers, no career)
 Extrem nationalism (self-defined protagonism as
the most patriotic actor)
 Intolerance to civilian criticism
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 After the Civil War liberal officers of the
Spanish army were eliminated
 The repressive role of the Spanish military
reinforced extreme-right radicalization
 Franco’s neutrality during World War II
reinforced the internal role of the military
 The territorial structure of the military was
adapted to an internal enemy.
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 Despite rapid modernisation of Spanish society in the
1960s and 1970s, the military remained
anachronically conservative. It was known as the
“bunker”
 During the transition years (1975-1982) the most
radical part of the bunker conspired against
democratization
 ETA’s successful attack against Prime Minister Carrero
Blanco increased military’s discontent agains the late
Francoist political establishment
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 On February 23, 1981 the last (failed) military coup took
place.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcc0_8i0CYs
 The Army actively opposed the first democratic
governments of the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD)
 The electoral victory of the Socialists in 1982 began a
new phase of renewal that led to the integration into
international military Western alliances (NATO, OSCE…)
 In the 1980s a social movement boycotted conscription
forcing the government to professionalize the army
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 Franco’s police was a militarized one.
 Two armed forces were responsible for social order:
the Guardia Civil and the Policía Armada
 While the Policía Armada was renamed Policía
Nacional and separated from the army, the Guardia
Civil still has an ambiguous status
 During the 1980s, the Grupo Antiterrorista de
Liberación (GAL) was formed illegally to fight the ETA.
As a result of GAL activities 26 people (some of them
innocent) were killed
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 In the 1990s the Policía Nacional began a
decentralization process that finished with
the establishment of the Basque
(Ertzaintza) and Catalan (Mossos
d’Esquadra) police
 Even if the Spanish state has a relative low
ratio of policemen, the Basque Country
remains the european exception (6.5 police
per 1,000 inhabitants)
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 Along with Poland, Italy and Portugal, the Spanish
State is one of the countries where the Catholic
Church has a major influence.
 The Catholic Church is a counterpoint to the military.
While the military resisted democratization, the
Cathoclic Church cooperated with the government
during the “Transición”
 However, the Cathoclic Church supported and
legitimated Franco during the Civil War. According to
the regime ideology (the “Nacionalcatolicismo”),
Franco was considered “Caudillo por la Gracia de Dios”
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 During Francoism the Catholic Church regained
influence on the State’s affairs
 The Concordat of 1953 signed with the Vatican
institutionalized Church-State relations
 But as in other catholic countries, things changed
after the progressive Second Vatican Council (1962)
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The growing importance of social issues led young
Catholics to think the combination of Catholicism with
socialists or marxists ideas
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The foundation of the ETA is the most extreme case
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 The most important ecclessiastical lobby is the
Opus Dei
 Opus Dei combined ultra-conservative idea
with a technocratic strategy
 In the late 1950s and 1960s, Opus Dei took
the control over the government
 During this period, Opus Dei became strong in
the mass media, the education and the health
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 Paradoxically, social development produced by
Opus Dei governments led to a greater
liberalization of Spanish society
 As a result of liberalization, religious practice
declined and a vocational crisis followed
 Since the 1990s, however, the Catholic Church has
become an important political actor
 Divorce, abortion and education are the main
controversial issues arisen by the Catholic Church
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 Mass media are the third “poder fáctico”
 During the Francoism there were no civil liberties or
political rights such as freedom of speech. Public
discourse was controlled by a censorship system based
on the consignas
 In 1966 the Press Law of Manuel Fraga relaxed
censorship. New opposition newspapers were published,
but radio and TV still were strictly under control
 Transition to Democracy was a kind of “big bang” for the
media landscape. Nevertheless, not all the new
publications and radios survived regime change
The institutional Legacy of Francoism
 In the 1990s, the GAL and other corruption cases
forced the socialist party to a greater transparency
 As a result, three new companies appeared: Antena
3, Telecinco and Canal +. More recently a new
company, La Sexta, joined them
 Today TV continues to be a controversial issue: new
technologies as the TDT (Digital terrestrial
television) are at the center of political debate