Spain 50 years after General Franco

Few countries in the world have changed as dramatically as Spain has since the death of General Franco 50 years ago. Following his victory in a three-year civil war, Franco ruled as dictator for nearly four decades. His successor, King Juan Carlos, whose appointment by Franco in 1969 restored the Bourbon monarchy, abolished in 1931when the Second Republic was declared, used the dictator’s immense powers to transition Spain to democracy, for which there was a crying need among the population.

Today the country is one of only 25 nations out of 167 ranked as a “full democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The economy has moved from being very protectionist to a high level of openness, as measured by foreign trade and direct foreign investment. Spain was a founding member of the eurozone. Socially it is one of the most progressive countries; same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005, euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2021, and paid menstrual leave in 2023.

But in 2025 the country faces a host of challenges, some of them not new but becoming ever more urgent. The unemployment rate has come down from a peak of 27% in 2013, following the 2008 global financial crisis and the bursting of Spain’s immense property bubble, but at 11% it is still double the EU average. The economy is heavily reliant on tourism (94 million international visitors in 2024, the second largest number after France), a seasonal industry; R&D spending, central for technological change and innovation is low (1.2% of GDP), and the state pension system in a country with a fast-ageing population and one of the world’s highest average life expectancies is coming under increasing pressure.

There is also an acute housing crisis, which is deepening the divide between the relatively poor living standards of young adults, unable to get on the property ladder, and the more comfortable life of the elderly. This crisis is aggravated by the influx of immigrants in recent years, who are needed to work in sectors, such as agriculture, construction, and to care for the elderly, and to keep the population growing. Spain’s fertility rate of 1.2 children is far below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. Most of the 8 million increase in the population between 2000 and 2024 was due to immigration.

Other problems include the colonization by politicians of state institutions and companies; the government’s overuse of decree laws that obviate the need for parliamentary debate; corruption that is perceived to be relatively high; political pressure on the judiciary, and the closed party system list to elect MPs. Under this system, candidates are elected in the order in which they appear on the voting list. Since that order is decided by the party’s leadership, MPs are then beholden to the leadership–a system that fosters unquestioning obedience and stifles debate. A Pew survey showed close to 70% of respondents in Spain dissatisfied with the functioning of its democracy, the second highest level among the EU countries included in the survey.

As if these problems are not enough, resolving them is in the hands of a highly polarized and fragmented political class that is identified by the state pollster CIS as one of the country’s biggest problems. Tackling the problems and structural challenges for the greater good requires broad consensus across the political divide. More than 80% of Spaniards, according to the private pollster Metroscopia, would like to return to the spirit of compromise of the 1975-1978 transition to democracy.

That spirit saw broad consensus between the Socialists and the conservative Popular Party (PP), the two main parties, to resolve issues for the good of the country as a whole. Since 2015, however, hard-right and hard-left parties have entered parliament, making consensus much more difficult. The combined share of the Socialists’ and the PP’s vote dropped from 73.4% in 2011 to 50.7% in 2015, and recovered to 65% in 2023.

Spain had five general elections between 2015 and 2023, but only 10 in the preceding 36 years.

The unwieldy Socialist-led minority coalition government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez that emerged from the November 2019 and July 2023 elections, with a hard-left alliance as the junior partner, depends for its survival on parliamentary support from Basque nationalist and separatist parties and two Catalan separatist parties.

The movement for an independent Catalonia, which came to a head with an illegal referendum on secession in 2017, has ebbed but not lost its hold over national political life. The maximalist Together for Catalonia’s support for the current government came at the price of a broad and deeply controversial amnesty for some 400 people who faced charges for offences related to the referendum and the secession push.

Meanwhile, Spain’s public administration is still needlessly opaque. Franco’s archaic Official Secrets Law of 1968, which allows classified information to be kept secret forever, remains in force. It is very much out of line with other developed countries. In the 50^th anniversary year of the dictator’s death, now would be a good time to scrap it and agree to a new one. Spain has come a long way but, in some areas, needs to go further.

_{Header image: Photo by Sam Williams on Unsplash.}