Local elections were organized every three years, in each cycle voting for half of the mandates available in every ayuntamiento; from 1948 to 1973 the balloting took place nine times.
[4] Francoism adopted an organicist principle; it envisioned society not as a sum of individuals, but as a construction built of a number of traditional social entities.
[10] Compared to older Republican and Restoration regulations the scheme reduced significantly the number of mandates; e.g. during the Second Republic the city of Palencia, then ca.
In Tercio Sindical the number of those eligible to elect compromisarios is difficult to estimate, yet given the size of syndicalist bureaucracy it probably went into hundreds of thousands.
[21] This schizophrenic position of the authorities is summarised by a present day-scholar, who notes that the entire system was constructed to discourage mobilisation, but prior to the very day propaganda did everything to ensure largest possible turnout.
[25] The similar mechanism was employed in case of Tercio Sindical, though this time it was Junta Local entitled to suggest own candidates.
[27] Occasionally, candidates openly hostile to the Francoist State managed to gain seats in local councils; it was the case especially during late Francoism.
[28] Usually these were either single individuals or a tiny minority in the ayuntamiento; as such they posed little threat and the state did not intervene, e.g. in 1970 two candidates marked by the police as "oposición" were elected and confirmed in Seville.
At times and in minor locations even candidates known as Communists got their tickets validated, like a party militant elected from tercio familiar in Lorca in 1971.
However, at times the administration intervened; in 1973 a tercio familiar left-wing candidate from Barcelona found his electoral victory annulled by Junta Municipal del Censo.
[30] In the Francoist system choosing local governing bodies was not presented as politics, either big or small; instead, it was staged as part of the administrative process.
[32] A present-day scholar summarises the Francoist municipal electoral system as "leafy legislative tangle",[33] a conglomerate of shady rules developed at various stages and serving various ends.
As a whole it was designed as means of ensuring some efficiency of governance at the local level combined with contributing to political stability of Francoist Spain in the general perspective.