He did much to reconstruct the roads and railways that had been devastated during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and launched a massive hydrological program for electricity and irrigation.

In December 1933 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Sciences (Real Academia de Ciencias), where he delivered a talk in June 1934 on The Resonance of Structures.

[3] In 1934 Manuel Sánchez Arcas and Eduardo Torroja founded the Instituto Técnico de la Construcción y Edificación (ITCE, Technical Institute of Construction and Building).

[4] Other founding members were the architect Modesto López Otero (1885–1962) and the engineers José María Aguirre Gonzalo (1897–1988) and Alfonso Peña Boeuf.

Franco tightened his control while presenting a fascist image that would be acceptable to Hitler and Mussolini, whom he assumed would win the European war that was about to start.

[7] The main objective of the Peña Plan, a massive construction program of dams, reservoirs and canals, was to serve industry with hydroelectricity.