The historian Gabriel Cardona highlights in his works the chronic shortage of material resources, as well as the corruption and enchufismo, which did not contribute to improving the Spanish Armed Forces.

During the civil war, the Army became the central nerve of the new totalitarian state, headed by generalissimo Franco, a situation that was confirmed with the final victory in the conflict.

[2] In fact, the new uprising state was practically articulated by a military society,[3] The Army had invaded all social and cultural spheres: For example, the newspaper of the Falange, Arriba, had become a mere information organ of the Armed Forces.

[12] On 28 Septembera meeting of the Junta de Defensa Nacional was held near the city of Salamanca where the main military leaders of the Bando Sublevado agreed to appoint General Francisco Franco as Generalissimo of the armies and head of state during the war period.

[13] Although General Alfredo Kindelán's proposal envisaged that the appointment would be for the duration of the war period, the decree did not include such a limitation:[14] "...Franco's concerns at this time were more political than military, since in this respect he remained convinced that the African forces were sufficient to resolve a conflict whose end he saw as near, and he did not feel the need to go, like his opponents, to the creation of a new army..."On 1 October Franco installed himself in Burgos as the new undisputed leader of the rebels, confident that Madrid would fall in a matter of weeks, and more concerned with the political organisation of the new rebel state that was being forged at the time.

[15] One of the first decrees of the new Boletín Oficial del Estado confirmed the existence of the Armies of the Norte and the Sur, which at the time were the largest and most important military units.

[16][17] Major General Queipo de Llano was put in charge of the fronts of the II Organic Division and of the province of Badajoz, in what was constituted as the Army of the South.

The Army of the North would be commanded by Brigadier General Emilio Mola Vidal, responsible for the entire northern zone of the rebels, including the Cantabrian Sea, and the ports of Somosierra and Guadarrama.

Admiral Juan Cervera Valderrama was appointed head of the General Staff of the Spanish Navy and Captain Francisco Moreno was confirmed as Commander of the Fleet.

(1976)[18] Compared to other military men, Admiral Cervera was very active in securing supplies and new equipment for the Armada sublevada, as he was convinced that control of the sea would be decisive for the conflict.

[21] The national victory in the Northern Offensive allowed the fleet to move to the Mediterranean to be concentrated there, and 65,000 men of the Army of the North to become available, together with their armaments, to join the southern front.

In fact, these forces would take part in the decisive Aragon Offensive which began on 7 March 1938 and took the Nationalists as far as the Segre River and the Mediterranean Sea, cutting the Republican zone in two.

[26] At that time it consisted of 61 infantry divisions (840,000 men), 15,323 cavalry, 19,013 artillery, 35,000 African Army, 32.000 Italians from the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, 5,000 Germans from the Condor Legion and a further 119,594 from auxiliary services.

[27] At this point in the war the Republicans were exhausted, practically without reserves: In December the Catalonia Offensive began, which ended in February 1939 with the conquest of the region and a great military success for Franco's Armed Forces.

As if the problems were not enough, there were also the conspiracies of some important military men such as Alfredo Kindelán, Luis Orgaz Yoldi, Antonio Aranda Mata and Juan Yagüe.

[34] The generalissimo insisted on the commitment to the Axis before his brother-in-law Serrano Súñer, despite the fact that in October the High Command issued another even more critical report on the situation of the Armed Forces and the physical and psychological exhaustion of the Spanish population.

[34] During World War II, a significant number of generals and officers were on the payroll of the British secret services, who sought either their connivance with the Allied cause, or the flow of information on the activities and decisions of Franco's High Command.

During the Spanish Civil War, given that much of the rebels' armament was imported from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, there was little need for the weapons produced in their own arms factories (except for the manufacture of explosives and ammunition).

[42] In 1953 the United States and Spain agreed to sign a military aid treaty by which the Americans supplied armaments and technology to the Spanish armed forces.

[43] As soon as he was appointed Minister of the Navy (1962), Pedro Nieto Antúnez presented an ambitious naval programme that included the construction of some 150 ships, a project that was far from reality.

However, Harold Wilson's Labour government rejected the sale of the frigates to the Franco regime, forcing the Spanish naval industry to manufacture the ships on its own.

[50] On 31 January 1938, General Fidel Dávila Arrondo was appointed Minister of National Defence under the Franco's first government, with the three military branches remaining under his command: Land, Marine and Air Force.