Fraga's career as one of the key political figures in Spain straddles both General Francisco Franco's regime and the subsequent transition to representative democracy.

He played a major role in the revitalization of Spanish tourist industry, leading a campaign under the slogan Spain is different!.

On 8 March 1966, he attempted to dispel fears of a nuclear accident after the Palomares hydrogen bombs incident by swimming in the contaminated water with the American ambassador, Angier Biddle Duke.

A notable case is the execution of communist leader Julián Grimau, whom he called "that little gentleman" (Spanish: ese caballerete) in a press conference when asked about his detention and death sentence.

Another notable case was the assassination by Spanish police of Enrique Ruano, a student activist who opposed the Francoist State.

His departure from the government was prompted by the MATESA affair: the debt of the important publisher Manuel Salvat Dalmau was tangled with members of the Opus Dei, faction which Fraga opposed.

In 1973, Fraga (according to his memoirs he had been in the shortlist for becoming prime minister along Carrero Blanco and Raimundo Fernández Cuesta), accepted a proposal by Foreign Minister Laureano López Rodó to become Ambassador to the United Kingdom, under the conditions of the stint no being longer then 2 years, having the ability to appoint a counsellor and a press officer and not being excessively constrained by the Francoist administration.

The drastic measures he took as interior minister and head of state security during the first days of the Spanish transition to democracy gave him a reputation for heavy-handedness, and deeply damaged his popularity.

The PSOE enjoyed great popularity and an absolute majority winning streak in the 1982 and 1986 elections, in part because Fraga and the AP were generally viewed as too reactionary to be an alternative.

He was subject to a scandal in 1983, when it was reported that Rodolfo Almirón, a former Argentine national police officer leader of the Triple A, a far-right death squad in Argentina, had become chief of his personal security team.[n.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a member of the Galician Popular Party, succeeded Fraga as head of the PPdG on 15 January 2006.

[18] Fraga was one of the writers of the democratic constitution and spent part of his political career lessening the censorship law during the latter years of the Francoist State.

He most famously shouted during a television interview, completely unaware the camera was filming and the show was being broadcast live on air.

To his supporters, Fraga was a Galician hero who throughout his rule, modernised Galicia and built up a fair level of tourism to the region[citation needed].

He built great roads and motorways and in 2000, he approved the Galician Plan to build Spain's first high speed bullet train.

[23] Despite their political differences, he developed a close friendship with Fidel Castro,[24] himself of Galician descent, who met with Fraga in Galicia during a visit to Spain in 1992.