Francoism had already wrecked Spain before Franco died

Francoism had already dismantled traditional Spain before 1975

In 1968, the Carlist traditionalist Rafael Gambra published "The Silence of God" and denounced from within that consumer society was hollowing out Spanish Catholic culture. It was not a prophecy from the opposition: it was a diagnosis made from inside the regime itself, years before Franco died. The thesis put forward by part of the historical analysis is uncomfortable for both camps of the official narrative: Spain's economic, demographic and cultural destruction did not begin in 1978, but was simmering during late Francoism, from 1960 onwards.

The central argument is that economic developmentalism changed the country's structure —from countryside to city, from farming to factory— and the cultural superstructure that sustained it evaporated with it. A rural and Catholic country became urban and industrial in less than two decades. The result, paradoxically, was what Azaña had announced in the 1930s and which was false at the time: "Spain is no longer Catholic." In the 1970s it became true.

A million emigrants and an economy on clay feet

The figures used in the analysis are hard to dodge. According to official figures from the Instituto Español de Emigración (Spanish Emigration Institute), between 1959 and 1973 **1,066,440 people** left for Europe, 71% of those who left Spain in those fifteen years. Germany alone received **600,000**. The employment rate was similar to today's: people did not work more than they do now.

The miracle economy had fragile foundations. When Franco died, inflation had exceeded **26%** in mid-1977 and hyperinflation was antiestéticared. The Moncloa Pacts were signed, according to the reading of one of their signatories for the PCE (Spanish Communist Party), Ramón Tamames, because disaster threatened to degenerate into open revolution or a Chilean- or Argentine-style military coup. The famous "betrayal of the working class" was, in fact, a lifeline.

Why did Francoism allow legal Marxist propaganda?

Late Francoism repressed little and badly. While rank-and-file opponents were mistreated, the leaders were handled with kid gloves. The magazine "Cuadernos para el Diálogo", sponsored by a member of the Movimiento's council such as Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez, published pure Marxism at PCE level between 1963 and 1978. Declared enemies of the regime were allowed to hold senior positions in the administration.

The popular culture promoted by TVE was "Ye Ye Culture". Marisol, the girl from the 1960s films, appeared in the 1970s with hypersenshyper dances. Cinema, both Spanish and foreign, was dissolving traditional values. Perich's humor drew the capitalist in top hat, tailcoat and cigar, indistinguishable from Soviet propaganda. The conclusion drawn: the regime had no interest whatsoever in preserving the traditional culture it claimed to defend.

The vocations crisis nobody wanted to see

The decline of the Catholic Church had been unstoppable since the 1960s. Priestly vocations peaked in 1961 with **23,261** seminarians and fell to **10,830** in 1975. By 2004 there were **3,449**. The seminary of Derio, in Biscay, a mammoth building almost Soviet in scale, had begun mass-producing priests in the 1950s. By the 1970s, the factory was shutting down.

Francoism enacted laws exactly opposed to the principles of the Falange, according to Amando de Miguel's sociology of Francoism. And Franco himself, in the 1960s, went so far as to say that only two countries knew where they were going: Spain and Russia. The obvious amendment: the USSR administered its cultural propaganda far more rationally than national-Catholic Spain, which let its own disintegrate.

The regime that gave birth to its own successor

The chain of legitimacy was not broken in 1978: Franco → Juan Carlos → Felipe. The current Head of State holds that position by decision of the previous one. The "change of coat" after the dictator's death was widespread, with very few exceptions. Adolfo Suárez, national head of the Movimiento in 1975, became "the safe path to democracy" in 1978. The Spanish transition was, in words quoted from Trevijano, the place where all the traitors to their previous ideas come together.

The final paradox is the unsettling one: the destruction of traditional Spain that the Republic could not complete for lack of time was finished, involuntarily, by Francoism. The "Finis Hispaniae" Blas Piñar spoke of began under Franco, not in 1978.