The Second Republic delivered chaos, anti-clerical violence, & economic failure. Franco on the other hand delivered recovery, a rising middle class, & mass housing.
After the Civil War left Spain in ruins, the early autarkic period was harsh.
From the 1959 Stabilization Plan onward, Spain posted some of the fastest growth in the Western world (6–7% annually into the 1970s). It industrialized, Franco opened to tourism & foreign investment, & climbed into the ranks of the larger economies.
Unemployment fell to very low single digits by the 1950s–1970s as real wages & consumer goods spread. A broad middle class expanded through industrialization & rising home ownership, something the polarized, strike-ridden Republic never achieved.
When it came to housing, the regime pursued the explicit goal of “a Spain of owners, not proletarians.” Millions of protected & subsidized units were built, especially from the late 1950s through the 1970s, housing the rural to urban migration & turning large numbers of workers into property owners.
Early post-war shortages & shantytowns were real; the scale of later construction was not.
The Republic had driven aggressive secularization & then presided over the killing of 7,000 clergy & widespread desecration. Franco restored the Church’s institutional position, ended that campaign, & framed the Nationalist cause as a defense of Catholic Spain.
The Republic’s life was defined by polarization, mass violence, & inability to govern.
Franco’s regime imposed order, survived isolation, shifted policy when autarky didn’t provide the correct results, & oversaw the modernization that created Spain’s modern middle class.