The Triumph of ‘Normality’,Social Attitudes,Popular Opinion and the Construction of the Franco Regime in Post-War Rural Spain (1936–1952)

Introduction

In recent years, researchers have increasingly focused their attention on popular opinion and the social and political beliefs of those who lived under the dictatorial regimes that arose from the shadows of the First World War. Without diminishing the importance of coercion and terror, these historians have emphasized the way in which such regimes built support. Their efforts have left us with richer and better ways of understanding the workings of dictatorships. A large proportion of these advances have come through the study of the great European totalitarian dictatorships (Italian Fascism, German Nazism and the Stalinist Soviet Union) and, to a lesser extent, through other non-democratic systems such as the German Democratic Republic or Vichy France. ² Nevertheless, the Portuguese ‘New State’ and Spanish Francoism have hardly featured in the main accounts dealing with social attitudes within European dictatorships. This is somewhat surprising, if we bear in mind that both regimes constituted, irrespective of their political natures, the longest lasting of European dictatorships born in the interwar period. ³

This article seeks to place the enduring Francoist dictatorship within the international debate on the role of popular opinion and social beliefs and attitudes. It aims to do so by building on some of the extremely important advances made in recent years in the study of social support, mobilization and consensus within Francoism. ⁴ Historians such as Molinero, Ysàs and Cazorla, among others, have allowed us to better understand how the regime came to depend on men and women who participated in its institutions, shared its beliefs and benefited personally from their relation with the state. Similarly, scholars such as Mir, Saz and Font, have made major advances in analysing social attitudes by studying everyday life from a micro-historical perspective. ⁵ Building on these foundations, the research by Del Arco, Anderson and Cenarro has highlighted the importance of mass collaboration in the Francoist repression, the role of local power brokers in maintaining the regime in power and the economic and social policies that won popular support for the dictatorship. ⁶

Nevertheless, the debate continues to swing between interpretations that stress either consent or coercion. ⁷ As a result, historians have paid much less attention to those sectors of the population which we can describe as falling within an ‘intermediate zone’, in which elements of both consent and opposition regularly appear mixed together. This category of the intermediate zone describes ordinary Spaniards who were neither members nor supporters of the regime nor victims of its repression. Accordingly, they played no active role in either building or undermining the dictatorship. Although this section of society is not always easy to pin down, the somewhat half-hearted and shifting opinions of these intermediate groups proved crucial in consolidating the regime and beg for much deeper examination. ⁸ Indeed, in the few studies on these groups, historians tend to focus on the way in which those from the intermediate zone tried to resist the regime’s totalitarian efforts to invade the private sphere. Building on the work of James Scott, scholars such as Rodríguez Barreira and Cabana have shown the existence of various forms of resistance (such as rumours, feigned ignorance and so on). They have shown that such apparently insignificant actions could have political consequences and unsettle the political. ⁹ But the majority of these acts of resistance neither aimed to overthrow the regime, nor were they incompatible with other forms of ‘consent’ towards the dictatorship. Accordingly, if we hope to improve our understanding of the longevity of Francoism, we need to reframe the way in which we debate the topic.

For this reason, this article sets out to demonstrate the importance in the consolidation of the Franco regime of beliefs and behaviour observable within Spanish society in the 1940s. In order to delve into the complex spectrum of social attitudes at work, the article draws on a range of diverse sources. Diplomatic reports and the regime’s own documents provide first-hand accounts of social attitudes. To complement these sources, the article also makes use of a range of life-history interviews. Although many of the accounts offered in the interviews are constructed from the values and perspective of the present, they provide a rich insight into individual experience of, and reactions to, the regime’s policies and discourse. ¹⁰

The article makes a close examination of beliefs and behaviour in the province of Granada in southern Spain for two main reasons. Firstly, Granada provides a classic example of rural Spain at a time when fifty per cent of the working population belonged to the agricultural labour force. As official statistics show, other regions, such as Extremadura, Galicia, Aragón and Castilla, were, like Granada province, marked by backwardness, a tiny middle class and an overwhelmingly poor mass of the population. As a result, provinces such as Granada also suffered high-levels of unemployment in the countryside and experienced large-scale migration to more industrialized parts of Spain. ¹¹ Perhaps most importantly, the local level that we can study in provinces such as Granada matters because it is here that people first construct their identities, loyalties, ideas, values, memories and ethical beliefs. ¹²

The article begins by looking closely at the way in which the regime managed to survive criticisms of the terrible hunger that stalked Spain in the 1940s. ¹³ Although the hunger could never have led to the overthrow of the regime, it did generate social discontent and made the authorities feel less secure. Accordingly, a crucial explanation for the regime’s consolidation can be found in the repression and trauma caused by the war, but also in the conformist and resigned attitudes of a considerable part of the Spanish population. The article continues by examining ways in which the armed resistance movement struggled to gain support. In the last section, attention is paid to the way in which the regime survived the collapse of Italian and German fascism, and the role of popular opinion in this is examined. Accordingly, by the early 1950s, the dictatorship had overcome three major de-stabilizing elements and many Spaniards had accommodated themselves to Franco’s rule. In short, rejection of political confrontation born of a traumatic memory of the war and a desire for ‘normality’, as well as the effects of repression, account for the survival of the Franco regime after the defeat of the Axis.

The First Hurdle: Hunger and Depoliticization

In contrast to the Republican zone, during the Civil War the Francoist side maintained good food supplies. Reports from the Francoist authorities describe their provinces as ‘well stocked’. Even in zones such as Málaga, which would suffer terribly in the post-war years, the authorities reported themselves as satisfied with the food supply. ¹⁴ Some citizens even went so far to observe that it was hard to believe that a war was going on, and in response the authorities had to curb consumption. ¹⁵ Nevertheless, from 1939, the situation grew so awful that in popular memory the 1940s are remembered as the ‘hunger years’. ¹⁶ Both foreign and domestic observers quickly became aware of the food scarcity. In June 1940, for instance, the head of the Falange (the Spanish Fascist Party) in Alicante described the shortage of bread as extremely worrying. Similarly, in early 1941, the British consul in Mallorca reported that the situation ‘grows worse than ever’ and that ‘eggs, meat, fish and potatoes are unobtainable’. ¹⁷ In these circumstances, the poorest became ever more desperate. A British diplomatic report from 1943 noted how when an official threw away a banana skin in a Madrid park he noticed ‘a respectably dressed man picked it up to boil for soup’. ¹⁸ Malnutrition and poor housing soon took their toll. The head of the US charity body, the Rockefeller Mission, observed ‘a great falling off in the man-hour output of labour’. ¹⁹ At worst, hunger led to death from starvation: a reality that the British vice-consul in the southern province of Almería in 1940 noted was something he witnessed every day. ²⁰

Francoists sought to explain away this grave problem with talk of ‘poor harvests’, the destruction wrought in the countryside by the ‘Marxist hordes’ and Spain’s international isolation. Nevertheless, as the heads of the Falange in Granada recognized, none of these factors could properly account for the hunger. ²¹ In reality, the failings of autarky and its inability to supply the population lay behind the hunger. Horrifically, food lay rotting in warehouses or the regime simply sold food to the Axis powers. In Granada, for example, officials complained that rotten haddock was being dumped into the sea and olives were going to waste. Similarly, in Vigo, the authorities grumbled that tinned fish was being shipped from the city first to Barcelona and then to Italy. ²² Meanwhile, even the regime’s own local authorities admitted that the official ration was ‘totally insufficient’. ²³ The failings of the system bred conflict within the administration as officials fell out over accusations of waste and bad management. ²⁴ In the meantime, a huge black market (estraperlo) developed in which up to fifty per cent of commercial products came to be traded. The huge scale of the black market meant that it became accepted as perfectly natural by the majority of the population and, paradoxically, became a fundamental part of autarky. ²⁵

In practice, autarky also became part and parcel of the way in which society was divided between victors and vanquished. ²⁶ The Francoist rationing system also allowed the better off to receive more food than poorer people. Cecilia, a woman interviewed for this article, for instance, argued that in the 1940s her family had enough money to buy food and they had everything they might need: ‘coffee, sugar, chocolate’. The family’s support for the regime made it easier for them to obtain food supplies, especially as the regime returned land and property to them seized by the ‘reds’. ²⁷ Moreover, the local authorities assigned people into different rationing categories and so held the power to condemn some to hunger while frequently favouring supporters of the regime. ²⁸ On the other hand, the black market also favoured the victors. One man from Granada interviewed for this project, Mariano, whose family fell victim to revolutionary violence, remembers that no one in his village went hungry because they could obtain all they needed on the black market. This could be because the authorities looked favourably upon them. A group of locals from Lumbrales in the province of Salamanca, for instance, denounced the indulgence shown by the local authorities to two people who for a number of months had been selling goods on the black market in Cáceres province. ²⁹

Meanwhile, those on the defeated side suffered badly. One oral history interviewee, Alfonso, the son of a worker purged from his job by the regime, stated that ‘what we got from queuing for our rations was not enough … for a year and a half we went hungry’. Many like Alfonso suffered the harsh treatment that Francoists visited upon the poorest. We know this because many of those prosecuted for black market offences could not afford the fines imposed upon them and stated in their defence that they were simply using the only option open to them to support their families. Indeed, in a significant number of cases, those in the dock were the children or widows of those repressed by the regime. This was the case for Visitación Molina, who justified her trading on the black market on the grounds that she was a widow with seven children to support. ³⁰ Perhaps unsurprisingly, British officials felt that the suffering of the defeated was ‘the result of a deliberate policy the aim of which is to drive the people to desperation in order to justify severe repressive measures’. ³¹ Through political organizations such as Social Help (Auxilio Social), women’s organizations including the Sección Femenina and the Church charity Catholic Action, the regime ensured that the defeated could find assistance. Many ultimately had little alternative other than to accept the regime’s charity, and resign themselves to putting up with its existence and restricting their resistance to acts that posed no threat to the regime. ³²

Hunger and suffering also played an important role in depoliticizing those from the large intermediate sectors who suffered neither political repression nor official reward for their support. For many of them, and unlike substantial numbers from the defeated side, managing to keep their jobs and possessions allowed them to survive, or, in some cases, to better themselves. Many smallholders, for instance, were able to grow their own food. In the village of Frigiliana, in the province of Málaga, the distribution of land bestowed living conditions that compared favourably with the nearby town of Nerja, where many people were forced to beg for food. This situation was repeated in other parts of Spain – for instance, in the villages of Pinos del Valle and Saleres in the province of Granada. In the latter, nearly all the inhabitants had their own ‘small portion of land’. Similarly in Villanueva de Mesía people ‘did not live so badly’ because those in work had permanent contracts and those out of work ‘had their own patch of land and a few animals’. ³³ Further evidence of the differentiated experience of hunger comes from the possibly exaggerated observations of a British diplomat. He expressed surprise at the difference between Madrid, which he saw as inundated with ‘starving children’, and the village of Navalcán in Toledo province where ‘there was plenty of everything: ham, garbanzos, bread, oil, wine’. ³⁴ Families which held some property but did not identify with the victors, could live a relatively normal life, especially as they were frequently able to exploit the black market for their own ends. In the process, they provided the dictatorship with a degree of stability. ³⁵

Of course, among the main body of the population there were those who did not benefit from the system. Beset by economic problems, these groups could discretely blame the regime for their difficulties. But in many cases, their complaints were not directed at the political regime. Instead, they tended to hold responsible both the organizations charged with supplies and the local authorities that took charge of distribution. Indeed, the refrain that ‘if only Franco knew’ had helped forge the myth of the ‘Caudillo’. Taken in by this myth, part of the population excused Franco from any responsibility for corruption and poor living standards. ³⁶ Furthermore, many of these intermediate sectors accepted some of the explanations put forward by the regime for the shortages. Daniel, an artisan living in the city of Granada, noted, ‘Of course there was hunger! But they [republicans] had left us a country in ruins’. ³⁷ Others explained the shortages through droughts, bad harvests and international isolation. This was certainly the case of María and Miquel, a Catalonian couple who had spent the war in opposite camps but who both agreed that ‘there was suffering, but we accepted it because we had been through so much in the war’. ³⁸

These attitudes, however, should not be confused with mere apathy. ³⁹ On the contrary, even under dictatorships, individuals enjoy some capacity to exercise agency and display a diverse range of attitudes and behaviours often effected in discrete and hidden ways that are difficult to measure. This was the case in Spain, where social and political attitudes in the post-war period ranged between acceptance, conformism, misunderstanding and resignation. Precisely this lowering of expectations and the acceptance of the situation as irreversible led one foreign observer to note in 1943 that ‘apparently the poorest classes accept the living conditions with resignation’. Among those living in this way was Eugenia, resident in one of the poorer neighbourhoods of the city of Granada. She observed, ‘we didn’t have anything, but as we’d never known anything different we were happy’. ⁴⁰ Such resignation and acceptance created stony ground for resistance. As the observer commented, ‘nothing is beyond the horizon of the people but a wish to live and let live’. ⁴¹

This resignation existed alongside the decision of others to accept the regime and concentrate on their own work and families at the expense of any political activism. Some of them can be said, to use the term coined by Jordi Font in his study of rural Catalonia, to have reached an accommodation with the regime. For example, Concepción tells the story of her uncle who ‘was very critical of the situation’ and frequently criticized her father that ‘you only think of your work’. Her father’s response was resolute: ‘my only choice is to bring up my children’. ⁴² For this father, like the majority of the population, the principal challenge lay in establishing some degree of normality or in carving out what we might term ‘normal space’. This desire made people deeply suspicious of any political programme or campaign that threatened their own stability. ⁴³

In this context, we can understand why when the economy began to improve from the early 1950s, people’s willingness to accommodate themselves to the regime grew stronger and more extensive. It is true, of course, that suffering continued in some areas such as Extremadura, La Mancha or Andalusia – considered by the British ambassador as ‘by far, the poorest region in Spain’ – and that many workers took the decision to migrate. ⁴⁴ But, overall, the gradual move away from autarky and growing levels of international help both facilitated economic growth. Very gradually, too, living standards began to improve: wages rose by 28 per cent between 1950 and 1958, and the number of kilocalories consumed per person rose from 2300 to 2733. ⁴⁵ As some authors such as Antonio Cazorla have shown, migrants, in the long-run, also began to accept their situation. For people like Eulalio, who migrated from La Puebla de Don Fadrique in the province of Granada to work in forestry in La Seu d’Urgell in Lleida province in the early 1950s, migration offered the opportunity to increase his salary from 10 to 250 pesetas. After spending some months working in Catalonia, many such workers returned home pleased with their savings that they could use to keep their families from hunger. ⁴⁶ In summary, large sectors of the population moved merely from abject poverty to plain poverty. It is clear that this poverty continued: as late as 1960 only 45 per cent of Spanish homes had running water, only 24 per cent had a shower and just 18.8 per cent a telephone. ⁴⁷ Nevertheless, memory of the war and hunger, alongside the slow improvement in living standards, helped encourage conformism among those who did not want to make life any more complicated. ⁴⁸ Accordingly, hunger and autarky prepared the ground for the depoliticization that accompanied economic improvement from the early 1950s.

The Second Hurdle: The Antifrancoist Guerrilla as an Obstacle to Normality

The majority of studies of the armed resistance to Francoism have explored the way the movement impeded the consolidation of the dictatorship. Particular emphasis has been placed on the overtly political movement that developed from the mid-1940s. ⁴⁹ The few studies we have of the relationship between the armed resistance movement and Spanish society have focused most of all on the social support for the guerrillas. ⁵⁰ This focus leaves out those who accommodated themselves to the regime and those who might have felt deep unease with the resistance movement. Accordingly, while we know much about the degree to which the resistance threatened the regime, we know much less about its effects in stabilizing the dictatorship.

We should start by noting that although the armed resistance movement at just over 8000 men strong was not the largest movement in Europe, it did form one of the most enduring (1936–1952). ⁵¹ This long timeframe means we need to be aware of the changing and dynamic nature of social attitudes towards the movement. ⁵² In its first phase from 1936 to 1943, the guerrilla movement was made up of a few dozen badly organized armed groups scattered around mountainous areas of the country. In most cases, these groups were composed of young men, who were shaped by their war experiences and saw the armed struggle most of all as a means to survive. Just one hundred of the 8000 men based themselves in urban areas. ⁵³ Rural zones in fact offered the best topographical protection and made it easier for resisters to call on the support of friends and relatives in their close-knit communities. ⁵⁴

Despite its weaknesses, the armed resistance gave the authorities serious pause for thought. The Falange in Granada, for instance, spoke of the ‘extraordinary gravity’ of the situation and noted the general alarm sweeping through the population. This was at a time when there were only 15 armed men at large in the province. ⁵⁵ In fact, part of the concern of the Falange was to secure weapons for itself and strengthen the party against its political rivals. Personal security was at stake because the resisters often targeted Falangists. A group of Falangists, for instance, came under attack in the Purullena (Granada) in May 1941. ⁵⁶ The pattern repeated itself across Spain, and in Quiroga (Lugo) on 6 February 1939 two Falangists well known for their role in the Francoist repression were killed by a group of guerrilleros. ⁵⁷ Although such murders were not popular, attacks of this sort against those particularly hated by the community were accepted by parts of the population. Indeed, for many, the Falange became synonymous with the poor economy, political indoctrination and repression – all of which violated local community norms. Indeed, even among those who opposed the resistance and supported the regime, such attacks against the enemies of the community seemed well deserved. ⁵⁸

The situation for the resistance improved from 1943 as the Axis powers struggled in the Second World War and new hope helped left-wing organizations rebuild their strength, as was well illustrated in the following months by the nearly 9000 members of the Spanish resistance units (Agrupación de Guerrilleros Españoles) waiting on the Franco-Spanish border to invade Spain. ⁵⁹ At this time, discontent with the economic situation also helped win the resistance some support, particularly among rural groups. ⁶⁰ The authorities swiftly noted how growing social support was strengthening the resistance. The civil governor of Granada, for instance, reported an ‘increase in banditry’ which he explained through the ‘close contact they enjoy with villagers, and even in the city, who protect them, supply them and meet with them to plan kidnappings and attacks’. Similarly, in 1946, the British ambassador reported on areas of Extremadura and Ciudad Real, noting that ‘in the villages and small towns the guerrillas obtain information and secret assistance from sympathisers who are sometimes organized as a fifth column’. ⁶¹ Internationally isolated, incapable of solving economic problems and pressed by the guerrilla movement, the Franco regime became preoccupied and unsettled.

Nevertheless, towards the middle of 1946, the cloud hanging over the Franco regime gained a silver lining. In the first place, it became clear that the democratic powers were not going to intervene in Spain to overthrow the ‘fascist’ regime. This disillusioned many in the resistance and its support base, especially those who had overestimated the strength of the armed resistance movement. Florián García Velasco, head of the 11th Sector of the Levante Guerrilla Grouping, confirms this stating, ‘we enjoyed fabulous and tremendous support. From 1947 it started to decline’. ⁶² Secondly, state repression grew much more effective. Legislation became harsher, the groups sent to combat the resistance became more effective and greater pressure was placed on the resistance’s support base. All of these factors helped diminish the size of the resistance movement. All too aware of their limited chances of success, many members of the resistance movement began to desert, with some even joining the government forces waging war against their former comrades. ⁶³ Moreover, the decline of kinship groups within the resistance and the rise of a much more ideological movement changed attitudes towards the guerrillas. As the Spanish Communist Party increasingly took control of the movement, the rural population became ever less inclined to supply resisters whom they associated with political causes. ⁶⁴

Nevertheless, to explain the gradual breaking apart of the armed resistance and the consolidation of the dictatorship, we also need to bear in mind the strong desire for normality that permeated the war-weary intermediate sectors of society. The existence of the guerrillas, and the armed forces combatting them, represented a clear challenge to the goal of returning to normal life. This desire divided society in a variety of ways. For instance, there were groups of landowners, who neither supported nor opposed the regime, who had been attacked by the resistance. They had sometimes pressed for years for better policing to prevent the attacks and kidnappings that plagued their lives and had sparked considerable panic. Families like that of Ana García Arrabal felt this way. The daughter of a landowner from Alhama de Granada, she and her relatives had been forced to leave their remote home in the countryside. Others like Severiano Martínez, who had a small cattle farm in Botija in Cáceres province, felt the same way too. His family had been forced on various occasions to hand over supplies, such as 12lb of flour, to the guerrillas. For this the authorities arrested him and sentenced him to six years in jail. ⁶⁵

Also turning against the guerrillas were ordinary people who had grasped that the Allies had embraced anti-Communism, which made it much easier to criminalize the resistance. In 1947, the Francoist authorities ordered that the term guerrilleros be substituted in all instances by terms such as bandits. These terms had in fact been in use for a long time and many Spaniards had absorbed them and made them part of their own vocabulary. This formed part of the process by which they came to doubt the legitimacy of the resistance. ⁶⁶

The turn against the guerrillas only heightened as the increasingly desperate resisters became much less selective in their victims and their operations grew crueller. This can be seen in the killing of the business owner Indalecio Romero de la Cruz on 21 February 1947 on the streets of Granada by the well-known guerrilla group, the Quero Brothers. A symbol of traditional Catholic values and a representative of the Granada Charity Association, his death shocked the population, damaged the reputation of the guerrilla movement and increased hostility to its actions. ⁶⁷

Police actions also became more unpalatable. The authorities proved particularly aggressive against the guerrilla support network and began to disrupt everyday life for many citizens. As a result, the resistance became seen as an ever-greater threat to normal life. Concepción, for instance, explains that her father-in-law, a station manager in Sierra Nevada (Granada), found himself caught between the rock of the ‘reds’ and the hard place of the Civil Guard; both of whom he supplied with tobacco. Similarly, Juan remembers that many people in Cúllar (Granada) were obliged to help both the ‘bandits’ and the Civil Guard. One group would arrive and be given food and drink and, once they had gone, a short time later the other group would come and demand supplies. ⁶⁸ The intensification of the counterinsurgency also brought in its train a host of other problems for the local population. Curfews, travel restrictions, and curbs on the transport of food all became intensely inconvenient.

The British authorities in Málaga, for instance, reported that entire areas had been placed under martial law and subjected to curfews. In other parts of Spain such as Miera (Cantabria), feeling also grew against the need for safe-conduct passes to travel to other areas and for measures taken to concentrate farmers and their livestock in particular areas. ⁶⁹ The British consul in Vigo offered a similar view when he commented on the ‘growing popular unrest’ caused by ‘the curfew imposed by the provincial authorities’ and the ‘road controls’ set up in the region. But he also highlighted ‘a general determination to support the authorities in action against lawlessness and disorder’. ⁷⁰

The apparently contradictory attitudes revealed by this report in fact reflected the exasperation of those who lived in areas where the guerrilla movement was active. One interviewee, Jacinto, who hailed from a middle-class family from a small village in Granada province, reported that many people were tired of dealing with both the resistance and state forces. ⁷¹ We should not be surprised to learn, then, that there were many who did not necessarily sympathize with the Franco regime who were relieved when the last guerrillas were wiped out at the start of the 1950s. Juan, just a small boy in the post-war period, remembers, for instance, that when the last guerrillero was killed in Cúllar (Granada), the local population filed before his corpse ‘to make sure they knew it was him’ and ‘people were pleased he was dead because it was a relief’. ⁷² Such deaths, of course, closed the door on a war that had raged since 1936.

The Third Hurdle: Political Isolation as an Enemy of ‘Peace’

The third major destabilizing element faced by the dictatorship in the 1940s was the international isolation suffered by the regime after the end of the Second World. The threat, however, proved short-lived and by the start of the 1950s the regime had grown much more secure. More than likely, this challenge stood out as the only threat in the 1940s that might have brought about a change in regime. This, however, should not prevent us from recognizing that the general public’s hostility to any renewed conflict in Spain also played a role in helping the regime to survive. ⁷³

The definitive defeat of the Axis power in 1945 left the Spanish dictatorship in a delicate position. For the first half of the Second World War, the greater part of the regime’s support base backed the fascist powers and this even included groups among the regime’s ‘family’ of supporters who rejected the Falange. The regime also threw its weight behind the Axis by selling them war equipment and food and sending the Blue Division of volunteers to fight the Soviets while Francoists made their own imperialist demands. ⁷⁴ Despite this, and the continued adherence to the very end of hard-line Falangists to a German victory, from mid-1943 the dictatorship began to remove many of its fascist trimmings. ⁷⁵ The change of rhetoric and the tinkering with the regime’s image through devices such as the Charter of Spanish Rights (Fuero de los Españoles) or Franco’s Law of Succession failed to persuade foreign observers that any real democratic change was afoot. ⁷⁶ More than this, the regime’s track record of helping the Axis powers led to great pressure being placed on the dictatorship. Ambassadors were withdrawn, the regime was refused seats on important international organizations and suffered an economic blockade. ⁷⁷ How then was it possible for the regime to survive?

As a variety of studies and the diplomatic record reveal, the primary explanation comes from the reluctance of the Allies to intervene militarily against the Franco regime. ⁷⁸ Even so, insufficient attention has been paid to a set of other factors, and especially the attitudes of Spaniards who frequently accepted the regime’s rhetoric. ⁷⁹ Early on in the conflict, however, the regime’s close support for the Axis had clashed with the desire of the majority of the population to observe strict neutrality. As a result, opinion became more polarized. ⁸⁰ In October 1940, for instance, British observers noted that ‘all Spaniards would like to see the war end and almost all Spaniards would like to keep out of it if the war goes on’. This trend in popular opinion seriously alarmed those elements who hoped to restore Spain to imperial greatness through an alliance with the Axis powers. Such groups regularly railed against those they saw forming the great mass of the indifferent. ⁸¹ With the first Allied victories, however, the regime began to realize that the popular desire for neutrality, fear of war and the desire to steer clear of international issues on the part of the masses could offer the key to its own survival. Accordingly, Franco’s propaganda machine began to spread the message that the regime had always chosen to protect Spanish interests by remaining neutral. ⁸²

Aware of the extent to which popular opinion favoured neutrality, the regime unleashed a wave of rhetoric designed to distance itself from foreign intervention. It resorted first to nationalism and presented any foreign pressure as meddling with internal Spanish affairs. The regime also presented itself to the international community as a model of order and peace. To give a veneer to these claims, in 1947 the regime organized a national referendum to vote on the succession to Franco. The regime sought to define the Spanish state as ‘Catholic, socially just and representative’. The majority vote in favour was wielded as proof of the ability of Spaniards to decide their own destiny and as a warning against any external challenge to Spanish national sovereignty. ⁸³ The tactic seemed to pay off and by 1945 the British ambassador reported that Spaniards felt ‘offended by the BBC’, which was broadcasting critiques of the regime, and unhappy with attempts to interfere with Spanish affairs. For their part, the Francoist authorities stated in 1947 that ‘the man in the street, irrespective of his political ideas’, was ‘angry’ at the ‘anti-Spanish attitude of the United Nations Organisation’. This feeling seemed widespread and even affected groups opposed to the regime. A socialist friend of the British ambassador told him that ‘no Spaniard, whatever his beliefs, will be dictated to by foreigners’. ⁸⁴

Although the regime overestimated its degree of social support, popular opinion alongside the desire to prevent external interference in domestic matters helped shape the regime’s foreign policy and the effort to normalize Spain’s international situation gradually over time. In 1947, for instance, British diplomats reported that their gauging of public opinion led them to believe that Spain would experience some gradual evolution towards de-Fascisization. At that point, however, ‘excessive [British] pressure’ could backfire and generate a nationalist reaction, thus provoking ‘a new crisis at international level’. ⁸⁵

The Francoist state also exploited anti-Communism to bring greater political stability to the country. Although not a new tactic, in the context of the Cold War, presenting itself as the ‘first victor over Communism’ and the ‘defender of Christianity’ took on a particular importance. Once again, the rhetoric chimed with popular opinion. For part of the population, the Soviet Union bore responsibility for the Civil War and the atrocities carried out in the ‘Red Terror’. ⁸⁶ Many also feared that if Franco was swept from power, there could be ‘a second Red revolution’. These groups quickly rejected any government ‘under Stalin’s control’; a feeling which extended even to groups that did not back the Franco regime. In this climate, the Franco regime soon detected that its anti-Communist posture was ‘firmly supported by the majority of Spaniards’. ⁸⁷ Indeed, the documentary record left both by Spaniards and foreign observers suggests that the bulk of the population backed an alliance with the United States of America and felt that checking the Communist threat would bring peace and stability to the nation. In 1951, for instance, Francoist officials in Soria and Logroño reported that the growing relations with the United States were being ‘well received’. Similarly, when the United States and Spain signed the Pact of Madrid in 1953, British observers noted that the Franco regime appeared stronger than ever. ⁸⁸

The regime thus began to foster a discourse of peace. Part of this rhetoric centred on the ‘myth of neutrality’. This was the idea that Franco had resisted Fascist pressure to join in the Second World War. ⁸⁹ Through a survey carried out by the Institute of Public Opinion, the regime attempted to show that the majority of Spaniards considered the regime’s policy during the Second World War as the best means of defending national interests. Although the results were probably faked, they did show that the majority of the population valued peace as the best means of guaranteeing ‘normality’. ⁹⁰ A second myth was constructed around the ‘Caudillo’. Franco was represented as the ‘saviour of Spain’, the ‘guardian of national peace’ and the ‘tormentor of Communism’. The tactic proved effective and many Spaniards chose to back Franco as the firmest guarantee that their everyday lives would proceed normally. ⁹¹ The British ambassador certainly detected growing enthusiasm for Franco. He attended demonstrations where the crowd chanted ‘Franco Yes, Russia No!’ The regime also detected that there was ‘unbreakable support’ for Franco and ‘general support’ for him across many Spanish provinces. By the start of the 1950s, the myth had become deeply entrenched and British observers were forced to recognize that Franco’s support was ‘firmer than ever’. ⁹²

At the heart of the success of this strategy lay Spaniards’ memories of the Civil War. This made them fearful of fresh conflicts and suspicious of any change that could upset the regular course of their lives. ⁹³ As the Italian ambassador noted, the majority had voted in the 1947 National Referendum in favour of the regime because they felt that ‘the loss of Franco’ would mean ‘the loss of the personal security and the risk of Communism and another war’. ⁹⁴ For this reason, the admission of Spain into international organizations and the increasingly close relationship with the United States through the early 1950s won the applause of many Spaniards. ⁹⁵ As had happened with hunger and the guerrilla movement, the desire of the majority for normality proved decisive in the perception of foreign observers and the consolidation of the dictatorship. The third destabilizing element no longer posed such as threat.

Conclusion

This rejection of political disputes proved to be the key to the regime’s success. For many years, the regime successfully ensured that the majority of the population felt disdain for politics. Indeed, the regime managed to identify political disputes with the social conflicts and tensions of the Republican period before the Civil War. In addition, the regime’s representatives managed to persuade many in the population that the dictatorship had nothing to do with formal politics. Indeed, officials argued that the new regime was being built on ‘material reality’ and not on the ‘empty words’ that had marked the Republican period. Accordingly, when the regime found itself forced to carry out some rigged elections with a view to providing a veneer of democratic legitimacy, Francoist officials insisted that they were not putting political issues to the vote but administrative ones. ⁹⁶ In this context, economic problems, the threat of the armed resistance and possible foreign intervention were seen as great dangers that could lead to polarization, tension and conflicts. Ultimately this risked sparking another Civil War. Exploiting this, by the early 1950s the regime had strengthened its support and become more secure than ever. ⁹⁷

As has been argued in this article, the stability of dictatorships cannot simply be explained as the result of staunch support for the regime and the use of state violence to achieve social control. Instead, we need to pay more attention to the intermediate sectors of society, with their diverse and changing views. Without doubt, studying these groups represents a real challenge. Their views are dynamic, contradictory and not necessarily linked either to specific occupations or defined ideologies. This makes it impossible to speak of one outlook or to define the views of these sectors as simply apathetic or depoliticized. In fact, among the vast majority of the population, a rich variety of attitudes can be found, which ranged from acceptance to rejection of the regime’s discourse and its policies. We also find a range of outlooks, including indifference, non-conformity or a plain mistrust of politics, while, in addition, we can detect a good measure of resigned accommodation. ⁹⁸ Despite this complexity, studying these attitudes is extremely valuable if we hope to better understand the stability of the Franco regime.

Crucially, the Franco dictatorship deserves more attention within the international debates on popular opinion within non-democratic regimes. Indeed, enduring dictatorships like the Franco regime can in fact reveal much more than shorter-lasting regimes due to the richer diversity, evolution and changes in attitudes, perceptions and social behaviour. In all these cases, it would be profitable to research the intermediate groups in society who ranged from conformism to simple accommodation. It would also be fruitful to examine the interaction between dictatorships and society to better understand the influence of traumatic events such as war and violence. This would allow us to examine the desire to create a normal life and to protect the private sphere. Another area that could be examined would be the resignation of members of society to material shortages, repression and the suppression of political rights.

In short, in the Spanish case at least, these intermediate attitudes form one of the key reasons that explain the rise and consolidation of regimes characterized by violence, propaganda and the suppression of liberty. These were attitudes shaped by daily contact with the state, through its institutions, symbols, policies and discourses. Indeed, it was in everyday life that Spaniards came to understand the reality of hunger, the guerrilla and international isolation. For this reason, it is not surprising that it was in everyday life too, that they tried to eke out some ‘normal space’ and where at the same time the regime was, paradoxically, able to lay some of its firmest foundations.