Welfare under Franco: Social Policy and the Corporate State, 1939–75

Abstract

Social policy under General Franco was harnessed to authoritarian views on ‘organic’ solidarity in the pursuit of national ascendancy and traditional catholicism. His state would be exclusionary, embodying a ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ (Esteban, 1976). Throughout the regime, the Generalissimo saw the destiny of Spain as a Manichaean struggle between ‘red’ and ‘black’: he exploited clientelism to privilege ‘lo nuestro’ (‘our own’ — his ‘black’ nationalist supporters), extirpating any political participation of old ‘red’ opponents. Welfare policies had a secondary agenda, wherever possible, of excluding the vanquished.¹