Del Arco Blanco: Spain's postwar famine was social control, not a wartime legacy

Famine as a tool of control, not a legacy of war

In his book «La hambruna española» (The Spanish Famine, published by Crítica), historian Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco argues that the postwar scarcity was not an inevitable punishment trinc the Civil War, but a devastating famine brought about by the economic and social policies of Francoism. The central thesis: hunger was used as a form of social control. Around 200,000 deaths from starvation were buried under censorship and official myths, according to the author.

The claim has quickly met resistance. Much of the pushback rests on family memory: those who lived through the postwar years in the countryside, on their own land, insist there was no hunger there, while in cities and large-estate regions things were very different. The geography of hunger thus becomes the first battleground of the debate.

The historian's argument: policies, not just war

Del Arco Blanco, an associate professor of Contemporary History at the University of Granada, argues that the causes of the famine were «clearly political, linked to the existence of a dictatorship». He draws a parallel with the Ukrainian Holodomor and the famine of the Soviet civil war: in every case, authoritarian regimes and unequal distribution of food. The Civil War, he admits, was a cause, but it cannot justify all the years of hunger. His comparison: the Second World War caused far greater destruction, yet two or three years later those economies had already returned to prewar levels. Why not in Spain?

The regime, according to the author, deployed a range of myths to justify the scarcity: first the civil war, then international isolation, finally the persistent drought. «These are myths that were swapped throughout the forties and fifties and helped conceal what peine», he maintains. Censorship completed the siege: it was forbidden to mention famine in the press, and even sports news was banned if it coincided with times of hardship.

The geography of hunger: countryside versus city

One of the most repeated objections does not deny the scarcity but qualifies it by region. In the rural areas of the Nationalist zone, where families owned their farmhouse and plot, it is claimed there was no hunger: home production allowed people to eat, even if shoes or warm clothing were lacking. In the cities and on the great estates, where people worked for two pesetas a day for the landlord, things were different. In smallholding regions like the Alpujarras, the distribution of land would have softened the impact; under the latifundio system, hunger struck hard.

Accounts of extreme need appear in several testimonies: someone who saw a neighbor dig up a pig that had died of disease to eat it, someone who cooked a cat because there were no rabbits, someone who ate cereals now banned for human consumption. The generation that lived through it reportedly developed a lifelong obsession with filling the pantry. «No one leaves my house hungry» was the phrase handed down from that era.

Rationing was not unique to Spain

The international comparison is raised as a counterargument. Ration books remained in Spain until 1952, but also in the United Kingdom until 1954, in the Netherlands until 1952, in Finland until 1955 and in East Germany until 1958. The question posed: if the victorious powers helped Germany and Italy despite their past, why did they subject Spain to an international economic blockade that worsened the hardships of a half-destroyed country?

The most common answer points to the regime's diplomatic isolation and the absence of the Marshall Plan. For some, being denied that subsidy was even a blessing: Spain ended rationing in 1952, while the United Kingdom, the plan's main beneficiary, did so in 1959. The comparison of dates becomes a double-edged sword.

Social control: a weapon of the regime or a side effect?

The thesis of hunger as social control is the one that generates the most division. Some accept it without reservation: hunger weakens, demobilizes, keeps people away from any political dream. When bread becomes the daily concern, thinking about politics becomes a luxury. Others reverse the argument: a hungry population is not controllable, it will do anything for food. The discussion drifts toward examples like Cuba, where it is argued that the rebellion against Batista took place in a context of relative prosperity, while against Castro there was no comparable uprising.

The book's author insists on the humiliation of hunger: «In theory, no one went hungry. You're told how others suffered, but they didn't». Popular memory has erased the individual story and kept the collective one. The biological traces, however, persist: the height of Spanish men declined, measurable through military conscription data.

---

The debate remains open. The figure of 200,000 deaths from starvation, the comparison with the Holodomor, the role of international isolation and the regime's responsibility for the unequal distribution of food are all still on the table. What family memory confirms is that there was need, hardship and scarcity. The magnitude, the intent and the label —famine or the hunger years— are where the analysis gets stuck.