Although Franco had visions of restoring Spanish grandeur after the Civil War, in reality he was the leader of an exhaustedcountry still divided internally and impoverished by a long and costly war. Thestability of his government was made more precarious by the outbreak ofWorld War II only five months later. Despite his sympathy for the Axis powers’ “New Order,” Franco at first declared Spanish neutrality in the conflict. His policy changed after the fall of France in June 1940, when he approached the German leaderHitler; Franco indicated his willingness to bringSpain into the war on Germany’s side in exchange for extensive Germanmilitary and economic assistance and the cession to Spain of most of France’s territorial holdings in northwest Africa. Hitler was unable or unwilling to meet this price, and, after meeting with Franco at Hendaye, France, in October 1940, Hitler remarked that he would “as soon have three or four teeth pulled out” as go through anotherbargaining session like that again. Franco’s government thenceforth remained relatively sympathetic to theAxis powers while carefully avoiding any direct diplomatic and military commitment to them. Spain’s return to a state of complete neutrality in 1943 came too late to gain favourable treatment from the ascendant Allies. Nevertheless, Franco’s wartime diplomacy, marked as it was by cold realism and careful timing, had kept his regime from being destroyed along with the Axis powers.

The most difficult period of Franco’s regime began in the aftermath of World War II, when his government was ostracized by the newly formedUnited Nations. He was labeled by hostile foreign opinion the “last surviving fascist dictator” and for a time appeared to be the most hated of Western heads of state; within his country, however, as many people supported him as opposed him. The period of ostracism finally came to an end with the worsening of relations between the Soviet world and the West at the height of theCold War. Franco could now be viewed as one of the world’s leading anticommunist statesmen, and relations with other countries began to be regularized in 1948. His international rehabilitation was advanced further in 1953, when Spain signed a 10-year military assistance pact with theUnited States, which was later renewed in more limited form.

Franco’s domestic policies became somewhat more liberal during the 1950s and ’60s, and thecontinuity of his regime, together with its capacity forcreative evolution, won him at least a limited degree of respect from some of his critics. Franco said that he did not find the burden of government particularly heavy, and, in fact, his rule was marked by absolute self-confidence and relative indifference tocriticism. He demonstrated marked political ability in gauging the psychology of thediverse elements, ranging from moderate liberals to extreme reactionaries, whose support was necessary for his regime’s survival. He maintained a careful balance among them and largely left theexecution of policy to his appointees, thereby placing himself as arbiter above the storm of ordinary political conflict. To a considerable degree, the opprobrium for unsuccessful or unpopular aspects of policy tended to fall on individual ministers rather than on Franco. TheFalange state party, downgraded in the early 1940s, in later years became known merely as the “Movement” and lost much of its original quasi-fascist identity.

Death and legacy

Unlike most rulers of rightistauthoritarian regimes, Franco provided for the continuity of his government after his death through an official referendum in 1947 that made the Spanish state a monarchy and ratified Franco’s powers as a sort of regent for life. In 1967 he opened direct elections for a small minority of deputies to the parliament and in 1969 officially designated the then 32-year-old princeJuan Carlos, the eldest son of thenominal pretender to the Spanish throne, as his official successor upon his death. Franco resigned his position of premier in 1973 but retained his functions as head of state, commander in chief of the armed forces, and head of the “Movement.”

Franco was never a popular ruler and rarely tried to mobilize mass support, but after 1947 there was little direct or organized opposition to his rule. With the liberalization of his government and relaxation of some police powers, together with the country’s marked economic development during the 1960s, Franco’s image changed from that of the rigorous generalissimo to a morebenign civilian elder statesman. Franco’s health declined markedly in the late 1960s, yet he professed to believe that he had left Spain’s affairs “tied and well-tied” and that after his death PrinceJuan Carlos would maintain at least the basic structure of his regime. After Franco’s death in 1975 following a long illness, his body was interred in theValley of the Fallen, a massive mausoleum northwest of Madrid that houses the remains of tens of thousands of casualties from both sides of theSpanish Civil War. Almost immediately, Juan Carlos moved todismantle the authoritarian institutions of Franco’s system and encouraged the revival of political parties. Spain had made great economic progress during the last two decades of Franco’s rule, and within three years of his death the country had become a democraticconstitutional monarchy, with a prosperous economy and democratic institutions similar to those of the rest of western Europe. In 2019 Franco’s body was exhumed and reburied in a family crypt near El Pardo, the palace outside Madrid that had served as his official residence throughout his reign.