Francoist Spain

Francoist Spain, officially the Spanish State, was the regime that Francisco Franco ruled from his recognition as Caudillo on 1 October 1936 until his death in 1975. It began in the Nationalist-held territory of the Spanish Civil War and came to comprise the whole country in 1939, organised around Franco and the institutions of the FET y de las JONS and the Movimiento Nacional. Historians describe it as a dictatorship with fascist or para-fascist features in its first phase, the First Francoism, moving later to a more conventionally authoritarian rule and a Catholic corporatism. In the Second World War Spain stayed formally non-belligerent while supporting the Axis, sending the Blue Division to the Eastern Front, letting German submarines use Spanish ports and shipping tungsten and foodstuffs to Germany, which cost it international isolation. After the years of autarky the regime turned in the 1950s to economic liberalisation and technocratic government, and on Franco's death in 1975 Spain began its transition to democracy.