ICS Working Papers Nº2/2016

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ICS WORKING PAPERS 2016
Under Ramón Serrano Suñer’s leadership, in 1940 FET-JONS’ political committee outlined the
first project of constitutional laws, which also anticipated the establishment of a corporatist
parliament. A total of 20 of the draft’s 37 articles were devoted to it. As Stanley Payne notes,
Serrano Suñer backed a ‘more fully fascist political system than Franco was willing to
permit’. The most controversial proposal contained in this project was the
institutionalization of FET-JON’s political committee as a collegiate co-ordination body
between the state and the movement: a kind of Francoist version of Mussolini’s Fascist Grand
Council. Conservatives viewed this body as the interjection of the party in the state, and
Franco dismissed it
Franco’s decision to create a corporatist parliament in 1942 was an important step in the
consolidation of his regime – particularly given the tide of the Second World War was turning
against fascism – and the chief institutional innovation of this phase of the redefinition of
legitimacy. Religion and organic-statist views of state-society relations did play a central
role The Spanish Christian roots, the exceptional historical position of the Caudillo and
representation of the people through a system of ‘organic democracy’, were to be the main
elements of the legitimacy of consolidated Francoism after the era of fascism
The Spanish corporatist parliament, the Cortes, was established as an instrument of
collaboration with Franco in whom all legislative power resided as regards the formulation of
laws. The procurator’s oath was only rarely present in other ‘corporatist parliaments’ of the
period: ‘In the name of God and all the saints, I swear to carry out the duties of procurator to
the Cortes in complete loyalty to the head of state and general of our glorious armies’.
According to the law governing the Cortes, this new legislature was to serve ‘for the
expression of contrasting opinions within the unity of the regime’. Franco, the head of state,
would continue as ‘the supreme power and to dictate legal norms’, but the Cortes would
represent ‘a valuable instrument of collaboration in that task’ The first Cortes consisted of
around 423 procurators, made up of 126 members of the single party’s national council, 141
from the syndical organization, 50 appointed by the Caudillo and the remainder
representatives of the municipalities, families and associations of liberal professions, etc.
Cabinet ministers and the head of the judiciary were also members. The large majority of
procurators were public servants; consequently, the weight of the bureaucracy within it was
very significant. The first municipal elections for the appointment of procurators by the
family, trade union and corporation corps were held in 1948. The only change in the
composition of the Cortes was the introduction in 1967 of 108 family representatives,
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