Sociological Francoism

Part of a series on
Francoism
Eagle of Saint John
Organizations Movimiento Nacional FET y de las JONS Consejo del Reino Organización Sindical Española Frente de Juventudes Sección Femenina Tribunal de Orden Público Instituto Nacional de Colonización Instituto Nacional de Industria Fuerzas Armadas de España Cortes Españolas Sindicato Español Universitario Servicio Exterior de Falange
History Spanish coup of July 1936 Spanish Civil War White Terror Francoist concentration camps Spain during World War II Spain and the Holocaust First Francoism Stabilization Plan Spanish miracle Assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco Spanish transition to democracy
Ideology Anti-communism Anti-liberalism Anti-Masonry Anti-semitism Authoritarianism Falangism Militarism Monarchism National Catholicism Pan-Hispanism Spanish irredentism Spanish nationalism Spanish unionism Traditionalism
People Francisco Franco Luis Carrero Blanco Carlos Arias Navarro Juan Yagüe Manuel Fraga Blas Piñar Torcuato Fernández-Miranda Raimundo Fernández-Cuesta
Economy Economy of Spain (1939-1959) First Development Plan Second Development Plan Third Development Plan
Culture Art and culture in Francoist Spain Cantos nacionales • Cara al Sol • Censorship in Francoist Spain • DGCT • Eagle of Saint John • El Caudillo • El Generalísimo • Francoist mottos • Gender roles in Francoist Spain • No-Do • Revisionist historiography • Sociological Francoism • Symbols of Francoism • Yoke and arrows
Laws and referendums Francoist electoral regime Law of Political Responsibilities Army Conscription and Replacement Law Fundamental Laws of the Realm Ley de Sucesión en la Jefatura del Estado Organic Law of the State Political Reform Act 1947 Spanish law of succession referendum 1966 Spanish organic law referendum
Neo-Francoism Búnker Francisco Franco National Foundation New Force National Alliance July 18 National Union (Spain) 23-F Spanish Solidarity
Related topics Blue Division Carlo-francoism Diplomatic relations Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) Francoist language policies Latin Bloc (proposed alliance) Pact of Forgetting Project Islero Second Spanish Republic Spanish Maquis Valley of the Fallen
Category  Conservatism portal  Spain portal
v t e

Sociological Francoism (Spanish: franquismo sociológico) is an expression used in Spain which attests to the social characteristics typical of Francoism that survived in Spanish society after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975 and continue to the present day.^[1]

The root causes of sociological Francoism are found in the prolonged state of repression that existed during the forty years of the Franco dictatorship (1936–1975), and the fear of a repetition of the Spanish Civil War and a clashing of the so-called two Spains. A further reason for its durability is the positive role attributed to Francoism in the Spanish economic boom (the Spanish miracle, 1959–1975), while avoiding reference to the mass Spanish emigration or the period of economic recession that prevailed during the ten years following the Transition (1975–1985). All of this led the Spanish social majority, including even those identified with the anti-Francoist opposition, to perpetuate the conservative and survivalist behaviours that were learned and transmitted from generation to generation since the 1940s. These include self-censorship and the voluntary submission and conformity to authority^[2] – which in extreme cases could even be classified as servility (most commonly identified with the "silent majority") – which provided the regime with its cheapest, most effective and most ubiquitous form of repression.^[3]

In an interview with Xavier Moret, the writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán described the phenomenon in the following way:

There was a sociological Francoism which existed before and still exists to a greater or lesser extent today, coupled with Francoist rhetoric in which only the best years – those of 1962 or 1963 and the first part of the 1970s – are remembered, omitting the years of misery and the economic recession that existed prior to the Spanish Civil War and continued to grow under Francoism. The economically prosperous years have been mythologized within sociological Francoism; however, we should remind ourselves that this success was based on exporting the unemployed first to Catalonia and the Basque Country and then later to Europe.^[4]

In a similar vein, the philosopher José Luis López Aranguren has written that "Francoism, while originally a political system, transformed into a way of life for the Spanish people".^[5]