Sociological Francoism

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Sociological Francoism (Spanish: franquismo sociológico) is an expression used in Spain which attests to the social features of Francoism that lingered 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]