And so, the story ends... that seems to be the watered-down ending of a
criminal dictatorship imposed by the narrative of the Transition, which
is nothing more than the story agreed upon by the dominant elites in the
Spanish State. The Franco regime was the project of the national
bourgeoisie, supported by international capitalism, which, in different
phases, protected its economic interests by consolidating a dictatorship
around the figure of Franco as the guarantor of that bloody order.
Franco's death shortly before 9 p.m. on November 19 marked the turning
point of a process that had already begun years earlier. An idyllic
closure of Francoism had been negotiated since at least 1968,
subsequently concealing a complex process of reformed continuity. Same
dogs, but also same collars.
Beneath the official narrative, presented as a feat of consensus and
democratic moderation, lay a profound underlying political logic: the
need for the economic, political, and military elites, consolidated
after 1939, to reorganize their hegemony in the face of an international
and social context that rendered the continuation of a dictatorship
untenable, a dictatorship that had already fulfilled its role as
guarantor of their privileges. Spanish fascism had done its job, but the
curtain would neither fall nor leave the stage; it was granted a leading
role as a consolidator and shock force, a role it continues to this day.
If we can identify a common thread throughout 20th-century Spain, from
the monarchy of Alfonso XIII, the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de
Rivera, the Second Spanish Republic, Francoism, and the current
monarchical regime, it is the economic power held by virtually the same
families and driving forces of Spanish capitalism. The Spanish
Transition should be understood not as a rupture, but as a recomposition
of power, where a significant portion of the Francoist elites and
dominant economic interests retained key positions, reshaping the
institutional system.
Forty Years of Francoism: Fascism's Mark on Spain
The Francoist regime was born directly from the power granted by the
military coup of July 1936, and extended throughout the territory
through a war of extermination against the working class and popular
forces. From the outset, it was a project with a counter-revolutionary
objective, serving the economic and military elites of oligarchic Spain,
anticipating the realistic potential for success had the organized labor
movement launched a full-scale offensive to build popular class power.
It was not a historical tragedy, nor a civil conflict between brothers,
nor an outbreak of aimless violence: it was the conscious and planned
gamble of landowners, large industrialists, the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, and army commanders to crush a possible victory by
revolutionary popular forces, which posed a serious threat to the power
structure built over centuries. The military coup was not against the
republican government; rather, the violence was directed against the
working class, and this is the first point we must understand in a
revolutionary analysis. There were not two Spains, but two antagonistic
social classes: the dominant class and the exploited class.
The Spanish bourgeoisie's prior project was to build a republican and
social-democratic government as a fire extinguisher against the growth
of the labor movement, and this republican government, as a simple
historical review would demonstrate, was the very breeding ground for
the preparation and development of Spanish fascism. The Francoist
victory in 1939 reinstated an authoritarian, militarized state
characterized by psychological and physical terror, based on systematic
repression, censorship, social control, and the destruction of all forms
of workers' organization. The state apparatus-from the Catholic Church
to the Civil Guard, from the National Movement to the military
tribunals-functioned as a perfectly coordinated machine to guarantee the
brutal restoration of the most reactionary capitalist order after the
people's social revolution. Francoism did not merely discipline: it
aspired to mold an obedient, battered, and subjugated society, where all
political or trade union dissent was considered a crime against the nation.
In its first phase, Francoism extended the extermination of tens of
thousands of members of the working class, and its project was firmly
aligned with Italian fascism and German Nazism, which took the offensive
initiative until 1943 in the world conflict. During the forties the
regime shifted its focus to distance itself from Nazi Germany, and to
survive the new global reordering of the victorious powers. Francoism
was tolerated and even seen as a political bulwark against Marxism in
Europe. By refusing to grant social and political concessions,
imperialist capitalism developed new strategies to crush the workers'
movements born from the struggle against fascism in the global conflict.
The 1940s and early 1950s were marked by the autarkic economic model
imposed by Francoism, which benefited business groups aligned with the
regime, plunging the country into hunger and misery while consolidating
an oligarchic capitalism protected by the State. The postwar repression,
with hundreds of thousands imprisoned, deported, executed, and purged,
was not an "excess," but rather the pillar upon which the regime's
stability was built and, to some extent, the return to the political
structures normalized by capitalism. The working class was subjected to
a mandatory, vertical union system, designed to neutralize any capacity
for conflict and ensure its subordination to the regime.
The Cold War allowed the dictatorship to achieve international
rebranding: anti-communism had become its safe passage. The United
States and the Western powers integrated Spain as a functional piece of
the capitalist bloc, opening the door to technocracy, developmentalism,
and a controlled "modernization" that never challenged the foundations
of power. The 1959 Stabilization Plan coincided with the visit of US
President Eisenhower, and the economic growth of the 1960s was by no
means a neutral takeoff: it consolidated new factions of the
bourgeoisie, reinforced inequalities, and used mass emigration to Europe
as a social safety valve. Repression became more selective, but no less
effective.
Throughout those four decades, Francoism mutated, but its nature never
changed: it was always a militaristic and ultra-Catholic regime that
defended the interests of the bourgeois class and ensured the continuity
of the economic and political exploitation by the business elites. The
workers', students', and neighborhood struggles that arose were met with
violence perfectly calculated to prevent any erosion of their
legitimacy. Repressive laws, the Public Order Court, the Civil Guard,
and the Political-Social Brigade of the police acted as the main
apparatus of control and punishment.
The Transition: A Pact of Silence and Reform by the Oligarchy from Above
Far from representing any grassroots-driven rupture, the Transition was
the result of a pact among the Spanish oligarchic elite. A segment of
the old Francoist guard understood that maintaining the regime as it was
was incompatible with its integration into European markets and with the
control of a working class that had been highly mobilized since 1968.
Therefore, they opted to direct the regime's evolution themselves. The
structures of the state apparatus born in 1939 had to be preserved; the
judicial and police hierarchy would remain intact; In addition to
guaranteeing the continuity of the monarchy designated by Franco in the
person who would be crowned Juan Carlos I, the inherited authoritarian
framework was not dismantled; it was merely given a makeover to adapt it
to the repressive and social control norms established by Western
imperialist democracies.
The student movement that erupted in 1968 had allied itself with the
demands of the working class and acted as a catalyst for a profound
questioning of the Franco regime. University assemblies and strikes
expressed solidarity with workers' struggles. Meanwhile, concern
intensified regarding the political and armed insurgency represented by
organizations such as ETA, FRAP, and later MIL, which, while not posing
a real threat to state power, did represent a symbolic challenge to its
capacity for total control. Cracks opened in the legitimizing narrative
of Francoism, leading to a resurgence in repression and its increasing
sophistication. They began to devise a plan of reforms negotiated from
above.
The assassination of Carrero Blanco in December 1973 was the symbolic
blow to the Franco regime needed to set in motion the Transition that
had been brewing since the beginning of that decade. Those sectors most
resistant to the reform negotiated from above had to be tamed; their
structure would not be destroyed, only the plan for a Francoism without
Franco but with die-hard Francoists would be dismantled. The economic
and political elites assumed a recomposition within the power bloc, and
a transition was orchestrated to neutralize the working-class movement.
Workers' struggles were experiencing explosive growth; tens of thousands
of workers were overflowing the vertical union system, generating a
potential social counter-power of coordinating bodies and commissions,
strikes, and mass assemblies in working-class neighborhoods. Therefore,
the Transition had to address as its main objective the neutralization
of this political entity that was developing outside the regime's
established channels.
In this context, the international role also carries significant weight;
and the United States, through the CIA, sought to guarantee a stable
ally within NATO, loyal to imperialist interests. Hence the "recycling"
of parliamentary social democracy at the Suresnes Congress (1974), from
which a rejuvenated, moderate, and functional PSOE (Spanish Socialist
Workers' Party) emerged, aligned with the new project. The PSOE, through
Felipe González, was selected as the ideal actor to offer a controlled
exit, capable of appealing to young and urban sectors without
jeopardizing the economic structure of Francoism. In this way, an
escalation like the Portuguese Carnation Revolution was avoided, where
more decisive action was required to prevent a rupture that would
destabilize capitalist interests.
The neo-reactionary offensive is combated with class organization.
The Francoist apparatus was not purged, and repression remained active,
with hundreds of workers murdered during that period. In 1975, when
Franco died, Francoism was not dying; it had merely completed its
functional historical cycle. The dictatorship, which was born as a
counter-revolutionary project, left behind a matrix that has remained
intact to this day, because Franco died, but Francoism did not.
The persistence of Spanish fascism is evident not only in institutions,
but also in the social agenda and the media through its partisan
branches, collectives, and criminal groups. Anti-fascist historical
memory must act as an active element, not to cover the past with
tributes, but to keep the current struggle against domination and
reaction alive. Resistance to fascism is not an act of nostalgia, but a
duty of historical justice based on class consciousness.
To break the chains of what is tightly bound requires strategy and
revolutionary struggle. The confrontation against fascism, both past and
present, is the struggle against capital. Therefore, an anti-fascist
front must, in any case, include a revolutionary organization against
capitalism. The proven collusion of liberalism and social democracy
always ends up opening the door to the expansion of fascism because it
fails to address its root cause: the capitalist system of exploitation.
Building real alternatives for emancipation and strategies for
intervening in the daily lives conditioned by economic exploitation is
the path forward in the face of the extreme right.
In the 21st century, we are witnessing how, following the advancement of
rights for women, migrants, and the LGBTQ+ community-won through
political struggles-as well as the increase in workers' struggles, a
major reactionary offensive is underway due to an organic crisis of
capitalism and global imperialism. The narratives and actions of Donald
Trump, Bukele, and Marine Le Pen directly attack all of society and
promote a rhetoric of nationalism, order, and security.
Ultimately, the regime of the Spanish Transition, underpinned by the
December 1978 Constitution, consolidated a model of capitalist
exploitation, based on a Spanish nationalism with a historically
colonialist and inquisitorial mindset. Only a comprehensive strategy of
anti-capitalist struggle and for libertarian socialism is the sole
guarantee of defeating fascism. Against fascist barbarism: let us build
utopia.
Ángel Malatesta, activist with Liza Madrid.
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/12/16/franco-murio-pero-el-franquismo-no/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
criminal dictatorship imposed by the narrative of the Transition, which
is nothing more than the story agreed upon by the dominant elites in the
Spanish State. The Franco regime was the project of the national
bourgeoisie, supported by international capitalism, which, in different
phases, protected its economic interests by consolidating a dictatorship
around the figure of Franco as the guarantor of that bloody order.
Franco's death shortly before 9 p.m. on November 19 marked the turning
point of a process that had already begun years earlier. An idyllic
closure of Francoism had been negotiated since at least 1968,
subsequently concealing a complex process of reformed continuity. Same
dogs, but also same collars.
Beneath the official narrative, presented as a feat of consensus and
democratic moderation, lay a profound underlying political logic: the
need for the economic, political, and military elites, consolidated
after 1939, to reorganize their hegemony in the face of an international
and social context that rendered the continuation of a dictatorship
untenable, a dictatorship that had already fulfilled its role as
guarantor of their privileges. Spanish fascism had done its job, but the
curtain would neither fall nor leave the stage; it was granted a leading
role as a consolidator and shock force, a role it continues to this day.
If we can identify a common thread throughout 20th-century Spain, from
the monarchy of Alfonso XIII, the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de
Rivera, the Second Spanish Republic, Francoism, and the current
monarchical regime, it is the economic power held by virtually the same
families and driving forces of Spanish capitalism. The Spanish
Transition should be understood not as a rupture, but as a recomposition
of power, where a significant portion of the Francoist elites and
dominant economic interests retained key positions, reshaping the
institutional system.
Forty Years of Francoism: Fascism's Mark on Spain
The Francoist regime was born directly from the power granted by the
military coup of July 1936, and extended throughout the territory
through a war of extermination against the working class and popular
forces. From the outset, it was a project with a counter-revolutionary
objective, serving the economic and military elites of oligarchic Spain,
anticipating the realistic potential for success had the organized labor
movement launched a full-scale offensive to build popular class power.
It was not a historical tragedy, nor a civil conflict between brothers,
nor an outbreak of aimless violence: it was the conscious and planned
gamble of landowners, large industrialists, the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, and army commanders to crush a possible victory by
revolutionary popular forces, which posed a serious threat to the power
structure built over centuries. The military coup was not against the
republican government; rather, the violence was directed against the
working class, and this is the first point we must understand in a
revolutionary analysis. There were not two Spains, but two antagonistic
social classes: the dominant class and the exploited class.
The Spanish bourgeoisie's prior project was to build a republican and
social-democratic government as a fire extinguisher against the growth
of the labor movement, and this republican government, as a simple
historical review would demonstrate, was the very breeding ground for
the preparation and development of Spanish fascism. The Francoist
victory in 1939 reinstated an authoritarian, militarized state
characterized by psychological and physical terror, based on systematic
repression, censorship, social control, and the destruction of all forms
of workers' organization. The state apparatus-from the Catholic Church
to the Civil Guard, from the National Movement to the military
tribunals-functioned as a perfectly coordinated machine to guarantee the
brutal restoration of the most reactionary capitalist order after the
people's social revolution. Francoism did not merely discipline: it
aspired to mold an obedient, battered, and subjugated society, where all
political or trade union dissent was considered a crime against the nation.
In its first phase, Francoism extended the extermination of tens of
thousands of members of the working class, and its project was firmly
aligned with Italian fascism and German Nazism, which took the offensive
initiative until 1943 in the world conflict. During the forties the
regime shifted its focus to distance itself from Nazi Germany, and to
survive the new global reordering of the victorious powers. Francoism
was tolerated and even seen as a political bulwark against Marxism in
Europe. By refusing to grant social and political concessions,
imperialist capitalism developed new strategies to crush the workers'
movements born from the struggle against fascism in the global conflict.
The 1940s and early 1950s were marked by the autarkic economic model
imposed by Francoism, which benefited business groups aligned with the
regime, plunging the country into hunger and misery while consolidating
an oligarchic capitalism protected by the State. The postwar repression,
with hundreds of thousands imprisoned, deported, executed, and purged,
was not an "excess," but rather the pillar upon which the regime's
stability was built and, to some extent, the return to the political
structures normalized by capitalism. The working class was subjected to
a mandatory, vertical union system, designed to neutralize any capacity
for conflict and ensure its subordination to the regime.
The Cold War allowed the dictatorship to achieve international
rebranding: anti-communism had become its safe passage. The United
States and the Western powers integrated Spain as a functional piece of
the capitalist bloc, opening the door to technocracy, developmentalism,
and a controlled "modernization" that never challenged the foundations
of power. The 1959 Stabilization Plan coincided with the visit of US
President Eisenhower, and the economic growth of the 1960s was by no
means a neutral takeoff: it consolidated new factions of the
bourgeoisie, reinforced inequalities, and used mass emigration to Europe
as a social safety valve. Repression became more selective, but no less
effective.
Throughout those four decades, Francoism mutated, but its nature never
changed: it was always a militaristic and ultra-Catholic regime that
defended the interests of the bourgeois class and ensured the continuity
of the economic and political exploitation by the business elites. The
workers', students', and neighborhood struggles that arose were met with
violence perfectly calculated to prevent any erosion of their
legitimacy. Repressive laws, the Public Order Court, the Civil Guard,
and the Political-Social Brigade of the police acted as the main
apparatus of control and punishment.
The Transition: A Pact of Silence and Reform by the Oligarchy from Above
Far from representing any grassroots-driven rupture, the Transition was
the result of a pact among the Spanish oligarchic elite. A segment of
the old Francoist guard understood that maintaining the regime as it was
was incompatible with its integration into European markets and with the
control of a working class that had been highly mobilized since 1968.
Therefore, they opted to direct the regime's evolution themselves. The
structures of the state apparatus born in 1939 had to be preserved; the
judicial and police hierarchy would remain intact; In addition to
guaranteeing the continuity of the monarchy designated by Franco in the
person who would be crowned Juan Carlos I, the inherited authoritarian
framework was not dismantled; it was merely given a makeover to adapt it
to the repressive and social control norms established by Western
imperialist democracies.
The student movement that erupted in 1968 had allied itself with the
demands of the working class and acted as a catalyst for a profound
questioning of the Franco regime. University assemblies and strikes
expressed solidarity with workers' struggles. Meanwhile, concern
intensified regarding the political and armed insurgency represented by
organizations such as ETA, FRAP, and later MIL, which, while not posing
a real threat to state power, did represent a symbolic challenge to its
capacity for total control. Cracks opened in the legitimizing narrative
of Francoism, leading to a resurgence in repression and its increasing
sophistication. They began to devise a plan of reforms negotiated from
above.
The assassination of Carrero Blanco in December 1973 was the symbolic
blow to the Franco regime needed to set in motion the Transition that
had been brewing since the beginning of that decade. Those sectors most
resistant to the reform negotiated from above had to be tamed; their
structure would not be destroyed, only the plan for a Francoism without
Franco but with die-hard Francoists would be dismantled. The economic
and political elites assumed a recomposition within the power bloc, and
a transition was orchestrated to neutralize the working-class movement.
Workers' struggles were experiencing explosive growth; tens of thousands
of workers were overflowing the vertical union system, generating a
potential social counter-power of coordinating bodies and commissions,
strikes, and mass assemblies in working-class neighborhoods. Therefore,
the Transition had to address as its main objective the neutralization
of this political entity that was developing outside the regime's
established channels.
In this context, the international role also carries significant weight;
and the United States, through the CIA, sought to guarantee a stable
ally within NATO, loyal to imperialist interests. Hence the "recycling"
of parliamentary social democracy at the Suresnes Congress (1974), from
which a rejuvenated, moderate, and functional PSOE (Spanish Socialist
Workers' Party) emerged, aligned with the new project. The PSOE, through
Felipe González, was selected as the ideal actor to offer a controlled
exit, capable of appealing to young and urban sectors without
jeopardizing the economic structure of Francoism. In this way, an
escalation like the Portuguese Carnation Revolution was avoided, where
more decisive action was required to prevent a rupture that would
destabilize capitalist interests.
The neo-reactionary offensive is combated with class organization.
The Francoist apparatus was not purged, and repression remained active,
with hundreds of workers murdered during that period. In 1975, when
Franco died, Francoism was not dying; it had merely completed its
functional historical cycle. The dictatorship, which was born as a
counter-revolutionary project, left behind a matrix that has remained
intact to this day, because Franco died, but Francoism did not.
The persistence of Spanish fascism is evident not only in institutions,
but also in the social agenda and the media through its partisan
branches, collectives, and criminal groups. Anti-fascist historical
memory must act as an active element, not to cover the past with
tributes, but to keep the current struggle against domination and
reaction alive. Resistance to fascism is not an act of nostalgia, but a
duty of historical justice based on class consciousness.
To break the chains of what is tightly bound requires strategy and
revolutionary struggle. The confrontation against fascism, both past and
present, is the struggle against capital. Therefore, an anti-fascist
front must, in any case, include a revolutionary organization against
capitalism. The proven collusion of liberalism and social democracy
always ends up opening the door to the expansion of fascism because it
fails to address its root cause: the capitalist system of exploitation.
Building real alternatives for emancipation and strategies for
intervening in the daily lives conditioned by economic exploitation is
the path forward in the face of the extreme right.
In the 21st century, we are witnessing how, following the advancement of
rights for women, migrants, and the LGBTQ+ community-won through
political struggles-as well as the increase in workers' struggles, a
major reactionary offensive is underway due to an organic crisis of
capitalism and global imperialism. The narratives and actions of Donald
Trump, Bukele, and Marine Le Pen directly attack all of society and
promote a rhetoric of nationalism, order, and security.
Ultimately, the regime of the Spanish Transition, underpinned by the
December 1978 Constitution, consolidated a model of capitalist
exploitation, based on a Spanish nationalism with a historically
colonialist and inquisitorial mindset. Only a comprehensive strategy of
anti-capitalist struggle and for libertarian socialism is the sole
guarantee of defeating fascism. Against fascist barbarism: let us build
utopia.
Ángel Malatesta, activist with Liza Madrid.
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/12/16/franco-murio-pero-el-franquismo-no/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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