ABSTRACT
Throughout the forty years of the Franco dictatorship, the public sector in Spain grew at a considerably slower pace than in most other Western European countries. The manner in which the pro-Franco élites traded government posts and other favours for political support, the lack of a democratic framework in which to put forward social demands, or simply the country’s economic backwardness, may go some way to explaining this situation. Spain in the 1960s was characterized by a stunted welfare state, a major shortfall in infrastructure, a strongly centralist administration and an extremely heterogeneous and costly set of stateowned companies.
