Guide to visit the museum

The Franco regime

Yoke and arrows (27c)

The Civil War ends officially on 1 April 1939, the beginning of a dictatorship that lasts until the death of General Franco in 1975. The first decades are strongly marked by rationing and shortages, the result of an isolated economy.

The regime exercises a strong political and social control and imposes a conservative morality under the watchful eye of the Church. The yoke and arrows, emblem of the Spanish Falange, are part of the symbology of Francoism and represent the single party of the regime. The parties and trade unions opposed to Francoist ideology are made illegal and their members hounded. The most important case is the execution of the president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, in 1940.

Nationalisms are persecuted in order to promote the image of a uniform Spain. In Catalonia, as in the Basque Country or Galicia, the local languages are banned once again and the institutions established during the Republic are dismantled.

Any hope of the fall of the regime after the end of the Second World War fades rapidly with the arrival of the Cold War, thanks to Franco’s opposition to communism.

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