First Francoism

[10] Stanley Payne denies that the post-war repression constituted a program of "mass liquidation", although he recognizes that although "the cases were decided on an individual basis", "a general criterion was applied to them in terms of the level of responsibility in Republican political parties and trade union movements".

"[5] In an interview granted to journalist Manuel Aznar and published in the Diario Vasco on January 1, 1939, when the offensive in Catalonia had just begun, General Franco explained that the civil war had created "an excessively high number of crimes, which have to be purged so that those who committed them can be reintegrated into society.

[12] The pastoral of Cardinal Primate Isidro Gomá "Lessons of the war and duties of peace" published on August 8 in the bulletin of the archdiocese of Toledo was forbidden to be broadcast in the rest of the Church media and by the press because, among other reasons, it suggested the forgiveness of the defeated, which outraged Franco, who was determined to maintain "a spirit of combative triumphalism".

In the preamble it was said:[19]The dimension of our Crusade, the heroic sacrifices that the victory encloses and the transcendence that this epic has had for the future of Spain, cannot be perpetuated by the simple monuments with which the salient facts of our history and the glorious episodes of its sons are usually commemorated in towns and cities.

[16] In those last years of Franco's dictatorship, the Catholic Church acknowledged its responsibility for the consequences of the civil war, although the document presented in September 1971 at the Joint Assembly of Bishops and Priests was not approved due to the lack of the necessary two-thirds majority (137 votes in favor versus 78).

Collective Pastoral Letter of the Spanish Episcopate in which it was stated that in "our country, the progressive effort for the creation of adequate political structures and institutions must be sustained by the will to overcome the harmful effects of the civil strife that divided the citizens into winners and losers, and that still constitute a serious obstacle for a full reconciliation between brothers".

Thus, the symbols of the new single party were those of Phalangist Fascism —the salute with raised arm and outstretched hand, the emblem of the "yoke and arrows" the chant of the "Cara al Sol", the blue shirt uniform (although with the red Carlist beret)— and also its doctrinal principles: the "26 programmatic points of Falange", excluding the 27th, since it said: "We [the Falangists] will strive to triumph in the struggle with only the forces subject to our discipline.

The Fuero del Trabajo, which gave "official" birth to national syndicalism, included "a resolutely fascist declaration of principles":[31] Renewing the Catholic Tradition, of social justice and high human sense that informed our legislation of the Empire, the State, National insofar as it is a totalitarian instrument at the service of patriotic integrity, and Syndicalist insofar as it represents an action against liberal capitalism and Marxist materialism, undertakes the task of channeling with a military, constructive and gravely religious air the Revolution that Spain has pending and that has to return to the Spaniards, once and for all, the Homeland, Bread and Justice.Moreover, from the beginning of the civil war, there was an intimate alliance between the Catholic Church and the rebels, which would be reflected in a reciprocal collaboration to achieve their respective interests.

On April 7, 1939, only a week after the last report of the Spanish Civil War was issued, General Franco announced his adhesion to the Anti-Komintern Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan, and shortly afterwards he left the League of Nations.

On August 16, a group of Falangists threw two grenades against the crowd leaving a mass presided by General José Enrique Varela, Minister of the Army, in the basilica of the Virgin of Begoña (in Bilbao) in honor of the fallen Carlist fighters during the civil war.

The liberal world succumbs, victim of the cancer of its own errors, and with it collapses commercial imperialism, financial capitalisms and its millions of unemployed (...) The destiny of our era will be realized, either by the barbaric formula of a Bolshevik totalitarianism, or by the patriotic and spiritual one that Spain offers, or by any other of the fascist peoples....

[50] The abandonment of "non-belligerency" was decreed by Franco on October 1, 1943, the seventh anniversary of his appointment by his fellow soldiers as Generalissimo, and the following month he ordered the withdrawal of the "Blue Division" from the Russian front and the paralyzation of the fascist process.

It all began in March 1943 when Don Juan de Borbón, third son and legitimate heir of King Alfonso XIII (who died in Rome on February 28, 1941) and who was living in exile in Lausanne (Switzerland), sent a letter to General Franco in which he asked him to prepare "the rapid transition to the Restoration" of the Monarchy before the foreseeable Allied victory, warning him of the "very serious risks to which the current provisional and uncertain regime exposes Spain".

At the Potsdam Conference, which brought together the three victorious powers in World War II (the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union), the "Spanish question" was discussed and on August 2 a declaration was made public stating:[70] The three governments, however, feel compelled to declare that, for their part, they will not support any application for membership (in the UN) of the present Spanish Government, which, having been established with the support of the Axis powers, does not possess, by reason of its origins, its nature, its record and its close association with the aggressor countries, the qualities necessary to justify such membership.The declarations of the Allies aroused enormous expectations among the Republican opposition, which in 1943 after the change of the course of the world war had founded in exile the Spanish Liberation Junta (JEL), chaired by Diego Martínez Barrio, which acted before the Allies as if it were a provisional government,[71] while in the interior of Spain the clandestine contacts between socialists, anarchists and republicans led to the formation in October 1944 of the National Alliance of Democratic Forces,[72] which did not include either the communists or the "Negrinist" socialists —who had also been excluded from the JEL—, and which was willing to make a pact with the monarchist forces for the reestablishment of democracy without making the restoration of the Republic a condition.

[84] The response of Francoism to the international isolation and the resurgence of the monarchist opposition was the definitive paralyzation of the fascization process, and the introduction of certain changes that would make it more outwardly presentable, "but without reducing one iota the omnipotent and lifelong power" of the "Generalissimo".

[86] A first step in this "metamorphosis" of the regime was the promulgation, on July 17, 1945, of the Fuero de los Españoles, the third of the "fundamental laws", which was intended to be a charter of rights and freedoms inspired by Catholic doctrine on the "dignity, integrity and liberty of the human person".

But the restrictions it imposed —Article 33, for example, specified that none of the rights could be used to attack the "spiritual, national and social unity of Spain"— and the lack of guarantees in its exercise turned it into a mere rhetorical manifestation, which only satisfied the ecclesiastical hierarchy by ratifying the Catholic confessionalism of the Spanish State.

But a large part of the articles were intended to legalize the mechanisms of control over the population as a whole, restrictively regulating the civic rights of association, assembly and expression and granting the Head of State total freedom to suspend the guarantees of the Fuero itself when he considered that public order or national sovereignty were in danger".

[88] A second step was to appoint a new government —on July 18, five days after the promulgation of the Fuero de los Españoles—, in which the Catholic politician Alberto Martin Artajo, former deputy of the CEDA, would be in charge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the most transcendental at that time, and who would be accompanied by two other ministers of the same tendency.

That was what his man of confidence, Luis Carrero Blanco, advised him in a confidential report delivered at the end of August 1945, after the condemnation of Francoism by the Potsdam Conference:[91][92]The pressures of the Anglo-Saxons for a change in Spanish policy that would break the normal development of the present regime, will be all the less the more palpable our order, our unity and our impassibility in the face of indications, threats and impertinence.

On November 20, 1945, the American ambassador left Madrid, and the effective ostracism of the Franco regime began on February 28, 1946, when the French government closed the border with Spain in protest against the executions of ten guerrillas, among them Cristino Garcia, a Resistance hero who had fought against the Nazi occupation.

[100] In order to attract Latin American countries, the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica[101] was created in December 1945 and among them he found the support of Perón's Argentina, which not only did not withdraw its representative in Madrid and elevated him to the rank of ambassador, but its economic aid was very important for the survival of the regime.

[104] The Estoril Manifesto denounced that the law tried to "convert a "personal dictatorship" into a "lifetime" and to disguise "with the glorious mantle of the Monarchy a regime of pure governmental arbitrariness", and affirmed the "supreme principle of legitimacy" that fell on Don Juan and "the imprescriptible rights of sovereignty that the providence of God has willed to come to converge" in him.

[106] In order to seek the "democratic" legitimacy of the regime, the law was first approved by the Cortes on June 7, and then submitted to referendum on July 6, 1947, producing a very high participation and the affirmative vote of 93% of the voters as a result of the official propaganda —the only one allowed— and other pressure measures —for example, the presentation and stamping of the ration book as a form of electoral identificatio—.

[113] The interview had been promoted by the collaborationist monarchists, such as the Duke of Sotomayor and Julio Danvila, and the general was accompanied by Prince Jaime de Borbón, Don Juan's older brother, "perhaps as a reminder that there were changes in the struggle for the restoration of the Monarchy".

At first the reaction of the police was weak (the civil governor would eventually be replaced because of this) and the captain general of Catalonia, the royalist Juan Bautista Sánchez refused to take the troops out on the streets, although during the following days measures of force were applied and the workers returned to their occupations.

The initial U.S. reluctance that the agreement implied a political endorsement of Franco was overcome after the election of the new President Dwight Eisenhower, who appointed James Dunn as ambassador in Madrid, who was less inflexible than his predecessor in accepting the conditions requested by the Spanish government.

However, the also Catholic Rafael Arias Salgado, who from the new Ministry of Information and Tourism was carrying out a fundamentalist policy, gave slogans to the press to emphasize Ortega's lack of religiosity and some bishops even referred to the "Masonic stench" that his corpse exuded.

Down with the King!In spite of the suspension of the Congreso de Escritores Jóvenes, student activism continued and on January 16, 1956, they held a meeting in the cultural circle Tiempo Nuevo, in Madrid, in which they drew up a manifesto, managing to obtain 3,000 signatures of support.

Thus, in the plenary session of the Central Committee of the PCE held in Prague in August 1956, which also supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the new policy of National Reconciliation was approved, which sought understanding with all the anti-Francoist forces regardless of which side they had fought on in the Civil War.