Gasna Wood-based Gas

Franco prided himself on his knowledge of economics and even claimed that he had won an impromptu debate against José Calvo Sotelo, a man who truly understood public finance. Among the dictator’s supposed economic insights was his conviction that autarky, which aimed at achieving national self-sufficiency and minimizing international trade, was superior to the liberal model of the despised democracies. He believed that this system had helped rebuild a defeated Germany after the 1929 crisis and had given Italy a strong economy. For this reason, when the war ended, the Caudillo made two key economic decisions. One was to shift Spain’s trade and investment away from its traditional partners, France and the United Kingdom, and toward Germany and Italy. The other was to replicate their autarkic models. Both measures would prove disastrous for the Spanish economy in the 1940s and beyond, as well as for the Spanish people.

In an attempt to distance Spain from Germany, the British, French, and Americans offered to invest in Francoist Spain and even guaranteed the supply of food and oil. Franco, however, rejected these offers. During the Civil War, his regime had already opened Spain’s mining sector to German investment, as Germany’s war industry relied on Spanish minerals. This relationship intensified during World War II, when Spain exported food and minerals to its Axis allies in exchange for weapons and a reduction in its war debt. In fact, during the two worst years of famine, 1941 and 1942, the Spanish state ran a budget surplus of nearly 10 per cent, but instead of using it to feed the population, it directed it to repaying the debt. 

As a result of Franco’s alignment with the Axis and his adoption of their policies, Spain became the only neutral country in World War II whose economy did not grow during the conflict—unlike Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. One of the reasons for this was that the Allies did everything they could to limit the amount of oil reaching Spain in order to prevent it providing more assistance to the Axis. As a result, cars and buses had to use alternative fuels, like the one shown in this advertisement, and industry suffered greatly. 

When World War II ended, the Allies punished Franco with an international boycott and excluded Spain from the plans for the reconstruction of Europe, particularly the Marshall Plan. As a result, in the second half of the 1940s, the Spanish economy declined even further. State controls on production and trade stifled output and created massive financial and supply distortions, in addition to fostering corruption. This is why Spain’s macroeconomic indicators did not return to 1936 levels until 1952, whereas most other European countries surpassed their 1939 levels just two years after the global conflict ended. Furthermore, the dictatorship kept workers’ wages depressed, and their purchasing power did not return to pre-Civil War levels until the early 1960s.