The Franco regime's efforts to reconstruct the Spanish economy after the Civil War turned out to be a long and painful process. Not until 1950 did the index of industrial production move above the peak year of 1929. Agricultural production only reached that level in 1958 (Carreras, 1984; García Delgado, 1987). As late as the mid 1950s, it was calculated, the average Spaniard subsisted on a daily diet of the minimum number of calories and proteins necessary for bare survival (Barciela, 1986). Albert Carreras's reworking of Spain's national income estimates for 1941–5 demonstrates an average annual increase of one per cent, which did little to make amends for an average drop of six per cent a year between 1936 and 1940. His index of industrial production shows a fall of 0.8 per cent a year between 1941 and 1945. From 1946 to 1950 the same indicator reveals a 10 per cent rise overall which compares unfavourably with increases of 70 to 110 per cent in three other countries of Mediterranean Europe: Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia (Carreras, 1984, 1989).

Official interpretations of Spain's miserable economic performance in the first decade after the Civil War usually put the blame on factors beyond the control of the Spanish authorities, not least damage caused by three years of conflict, prolonged drought (dubbed ‘la pertinaz sequia’) and ostracism by the international community after 1945. Yet to most Spanish economic historians, such explanations are little more than post hoc excuses for failure.