New Local Power

The military rebels did not wait until the end of the war to begin creating their own state. The first step was to revoke the Constitution of 1931, abolish all democratic institutions and replace them with new ones inspired by the authoritarian principles that underlay the dictatorship.  

In this process, local political authorities were designed in accordance with the regime’s institutional model: eliminating all vestiges of the Republic’s democratic legacy and constructing a new, hierarchical state under the orders of the dictator. Elected municipal governments were replaced by management committees appointed by the military authorities and, after the end of the war, by the civil authorities. These committees were composed of people with proven fidelity to the new regime, many of whom had fought for the Francoists. In the system, there was no connection between the mayor and the people. The mayor was a delegate of the central government and not someone elected by the citizens. The photo, showing the first Francoist mayor of Bilbao, José Mª Oriol, leaving city hall with Francisco Franco, illustrates this reality. 

The initial provisional municipal legislation remained in place until 1945, when the Local Government Law was approved. While municipal councillors were now chosen by a pseudo-democratic corporatist system, mayors continued to be appointed by the government and the absence of any connection between them and the population they governed remained in place.  

These new local powers were always subservient to the policies of the dictatorship. Their tasks included purging the civil service of anyone who was not a total supporter of the regime and replacing them with people of proven loyalty. They also created a memory of the war that consecrated the victors: changing street names, building monuments to the war dead and the “martyrs”; establishing a calendar of days devoted to the Francoist dead, the dictator, and the key dates of the uprising and the war. A third area of activity was  repairing the damage caused by the war , in part using the forced labour of the defeated. Finally, they were responsible for building the new infrastructure needed for economic development, but were hamstrung by limited finances. In Franco’s Spain, municipal governments had few resources of their own and depended on their contacts in the national government to finance major infrastructure projects. 

MU/UB/MJV