Madrid Under Franco: Post-War, Autarky and the Development Boom

When Francoist troops entered Madrid on 28 March 1939, the city had spent nearly three years under siege, famine, and aerial bombardment. Francoism received an exhausted capital and governed it for 36 years — more than a third of the 20th century — leaving a political, urban, and cultural imprint that can still be felt today.

The post-war years: hungry Madrid (1939–1950)

The first years of Francoism in Madrid were ones of widespread misery. Food rationing lasted until 1952. The repression was brutal: summary executions, overcrowded prisons, purges of Republican civil servants, teachers, doctors, and officers. The city was physically and morally broken.

Franco built his victory on symbols: in 1940 he ordered the exhumation of José Antonio Primo de Rivera's remains from a cemetery in Alicante and their transfer on foot to El Escorial. In 1942, construction began on the Valle de los Caídos — the great granite cross above Cuelgamuros, 13 km from El Escorial — as the regime's mausoleum, built partly with the forced labour of Republican prisoners.

Autarky and isolation (1940–1959)

The economic policy of early Francoism was autarky: closed economy, import substitution, total state intervention. It was an economic failure. Spain was excluded from the Marshall Plan (the US excluded non-democratic countries) and endured a decade of stagnation.

Madrid grew regardless, driven by internal migration: peasants from Andalusia, Extremadura, and La Mancha arriving in the capital in search of work. The city's southern and eastern periphery filled with chabolas — informal settlements.

The development years (1959–1975)

In 1959, under pressure from the IMF and the World Bank, Franco implemented the Stabilisation Plan: partial liberalisation of the economy, an opening to tourism and foreign investment. The result was Spain's "economic miracle" of the 1960s: one of the world's highest growth rates for a decade.

Madrid grew at a frantic pace:

• Housing estates: Large peripheral block developments built to house rural migrants (Vallecas, Orcasitas, Moratalaz, Carabanchel).
• The Metro: The network expanded significantly in the 1960s and 1970s.
• The car: Madrid was redesigned around the automobile, with large ring roads and the destruction of parts of the historic urban fabric.

The development years raised material living standards — household appliances, television, coastal holidays — but produced low-quality peripheral urbanism and the destruction of parts of the city's historic heritage.

Underground cultural resistance

Beneath the surface of the regime, Madrid had a subterranean cultural life: anti-Francoist intellectuals, censored literary magazines, film clubs, and the poets of the 1950s generation (Blas de Otero, Gabriel Celaya). The Complutense University became a focus of student resistance that grew through the 1960s and 1970s.

See also our guide to the Spanish Civil War in Madrid and the democratic transition.

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References:

• Richards, Michael — A Time of Silence. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Carr, Raymond — Spain 1808–1975. Oxford University Press, 1982.