ABSTRACT
The Franco regime halted and even reversed the process of democratization, modernization and decentralization of Spain initiated during the Second Republic. Indeed, the main objective of the Franco regime was to end the Spanish transformation process threatening the monopoly of power that the Castilian, conservative, land-owning oligarchy, nostalgic of the empire, had exerted for centuries. Once the last colonies had been lost (Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898), the Castilian oligarchy concentrated on guaranteeing its control over the peninsula. In this context, the expansion of socialist and anarchist ideas and the threat of separatism, which in Catalonia was revealed on 14 April 1931 with the proclamation of the Catalan Republic by Francesc Macià, at that time President of the Generalitat, exemplified the dangers most greatly feared by an oligarchy willing to hold on to power at all costs.
