5.5: Spain in the second half of the 20th century

 

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Spain began the 20th century as a parliamentary, almost fundamentally agrarian and conservative monarchy that clung unsuccessfully to its imperial past; today it is a decentralized and liberal society, with one of the largest economies in the European Union. By the end of the century (1975), the King of Spain had much to teach the world about how to use authority to promote democratic openness. But these changes were not gradual. From an anti-clerical democracy so opposed to the authoritarian tradition that it led to social chaos (1931-36), it went on to a violent civil war (1936-39) that was a prelude to the Second World War. Later, Franco's centralist and Catholic dictatorship (1939-1975) gave stability to the country, but kept it economically, politically and culturally isolated for decades. The transition to a democratic system with territorial autonomy in its political division marked a vibrant cultural process. Spanish cinema is one of the fields of cultural production that has achieved the greatest international diffusion since the end of the 20th century, and it is a good indicator of sociocultural changes, especially since the 1960s. The comedy The National Shotgun (1978), for example, humorously represents the confusing experience of the democratic transition, with greater freedom of expression, but still marked by the Franco dictatorship.

The National Shotgun (1978), directed by Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010).

The Franco era (1939-1975)

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As we saw, after three years of civil war, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, head of the right-wing military forces (the nationalists), assumed command of the government, with the support of sectors of the elite and the people, eager for centralist and Catholic stability. The regime consolidated its authority with the suspension of civil rights, the elimination of political parties, the establishment of vertical unions controlled by the State, the strict censorship of information and the concentration of power: the dictator governed by decree. The army assumed police functions, with strong repression in executions, imprisonment and forced labor. Thousands of citizens escaped into exile. Some formed a rural guerrilla group (the Maquis) that was reduced until it disappeared in the early 1960s. In September 1939, the Second World War broke out in Europe, in the face of which the Franco regime found itself in an ambiguous situation. His two power bases in Spain had contradictory positions before the Nazis: the fascist phalanx favored him and Catholicism rejected him. Nor were the precarious internal conditions conducive to intervening in another war. At his 1940 meeting, Hitler was unable to reach an agreement with Franco about his possible entry into the Italo-German Axis, because the generalissimo asked for a lot and offered little. Spain then adopted an opportunistic and non-belligerent position. In the first years of Nazi victories, it allowed Axis ships to use some naval facilities on the Peninsula or for Spanish volunteer troops (the Blue Division) to fight alongside the Germans against the Soviets. When the Allies took advantage, Franco emphasized his neutrality, extended diplomatic protection to some Jewish refugees, and superficially reformed his regime as an “organic democracy” (he created a legislative parliament clearly controlled by the dictatorship). At the end of the war in 1945, Spain was not admitted to the United Nations, despite the fact that the Franco regime had created two laws (on citizen rights and on referendums) that gave the appearance of greater civil guarantees. Isolation was also the economic policy of the 1940s in Spain, with a strategy of self-sufficiency (“autarchy”) that had served the war regimes in Italy and Germany well. The large number of people living in misery received charitable help from the “Social Aid” of Catholic organizations, which regained their traditional prestige in education, politics and the economy. Commodities were regulated by the State, and the interests of the domestic oligarchy and foreign financiers were preserved. Under the slogan “Spain, one, great and free”, a centralist policy of repression was applied against regional autonomy. The use of languages other than Spanish was prohibited, the teaching of religion, physical education and civic culture was imposed for the whole country, and a strict system of censorship was implemented over all artistic and journalistic production. In 1947, the regime stabilized its legal status by declaring Spain a kingdom of which Franco would be the Head of State for life. In the 1950s, Franco's regime gained some international recognition thanks to its reliable anti-communism in the midst of the Cold War. The United States established military bases in Spanish territory and, in exchange, Spain received technical and economic assistance, being admitted to the United Nations in 1955. The policy of autarky was left behind, and a team of Catholic professionals implemented an economic stabilization plan according to the guidelines of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which devalued the currency, stimulated foreign investment and reduced public spending. Initially, the plan produced so much poverty that almost two million Spaniards emigrated in search of work to other parts of the world. But in the 1960s, tourism, industry and the service area grew rapidly, and prosperity brought a wave of modernization and consumption. Traditional patriotic and Catholic rhetoric was losing prestige. In 1969, at 76 years of age, Franco formally recognized Juan Carlos de Borbón, grandson of Alfonso XIII, as his successor at the head of state. In the 1970s, however, Franco's regime had lost much authority. Students, labor unions and regional activism were mobilized in Catalonia, as well as extreme left-wing terrorist groups (the Basque ETA, the Maoist GRAPO). Even the Church and the financial community, which had been its pillars of support, were already less enthusiastic about the regime. Catholicism, renewed by the Second Vatican Council, distanced itself from the authoritarian rhetoric of the government. And the business sector regretted that Spain could not join the European Economic Community as long as it had a dictatorial regime. After his death in 1975, the Generalísimo was mourned by millions, but millions also celebrated the end of his term of office.

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Democratic Spain

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King Juan Carlos I swore to respect the rules of Franco's regime and assumed the throne in November 1975. But it was within these same norms that, by referendum, the Political Reform Law was approved in 1976, elections were called in 1977 and Spain had a new Constitution in 1978, with the Parliamentary Monarchy as its system of government. The so-called “constitution of consensus” established modern civil rights, freedom of worship without an official religion, a two-chamber parliament elected by the people, and a decentralized State that recognized autonomous rights to its seventeen territorial divisions (which were establishing their statutes between 1978 and 1995). This process of democratization was tense—with strikes and demonstrations by the left as well as with resistance from the right and the army, which attempted a new coup d'etat in 1981—but firm. The next thirty years were characterized by political stability in which moderate parties of the left and the right alternated in power peacefully. In the last decades of the century, Spain became a member of NATO (1982) and of the European Union (1986), hosted the Olympic Games and the World Expo in 1992, and achieved a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that is among the highest in the world. The remarkable economic dynamism made the country the second with the highest immigration in the world, after the United States. More than three and a half million immigrants (almost ten percent of the total population) arrived from Europe, Africa, Asia and America in the 1990s and 2000s. This presence is the subject of social and economic debate, especially in the period of recession that began in 2008, but it is also a source of vibrant cultural production. Along with the freedoms and rights acquired after the dictatorship, these changes have also generated a diverse and relatively tolerant society. Spanish cultural production represents a wide range of lifestyles in which self-criticism, parody and the superposition between the cult and the popular, the mass and the local, the domestic and the exotic, come together in divergent aesthetics. Pedro Almodovar's films or the novels by Rosa Montero and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán take place in a Spain very different from the agrarian and imperial Spain that had begun the 20th century.

Autonomies, one of the major changes introduced with the Constitution of 1978, to favor a pluralistic type of integration in the country. Rodriguillo, edited by Nnemo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Since the 1970s, the inhabitants of Spain have frequently and vigorously exercised their right to public protest. Public demonstration in Madrid, May 2011. .

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Fuentes

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• Blanco Aguinaga, Carlos, et al. Social history of Spanish literature. Akal, 2000.
• Carr, R. Spain 1808-1936. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
• Davies, Catherine, ed. The Companion to Hispanic Studies. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Flitter, D. Spanish Romantic Theory and Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Garcia de Cortázar, Fernando and José Manuel González Vesga. Brief history of Spain. Editorial Alliance, 2017.
• Gies, David, ed. The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2009.
• Kattan Ibarra, Juan. Cultural perspectives of Spain. NTC Publishing, 1990.
• Paniagua, Javier. Spain, 20th century. Madrid: Anaya, 1996.
• Romero Salvadó, Francisco. Twentieth-Century Spain: Politics and Society in Spain, 1898-1998. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.