La monarquía franquista : Discursos doctrinales y legislativos

Abstract

This book addresses how the monarchy that formally created the Law of Succession to the Head of State in 1947 had little institutionalising potential for a dictatorship without Franco, but much in the way of legitimising the ideological foundations of Franco's state. This legitimising function of the monarchy is reflected in legal and political discourse from the beginning of the dictatorship, in the midst of the civil war, until the approval of the Law of Succession. The main themes evoked in these discourses were the Spanish nation (one, Catholic and imperial) and a genuine representative system that validated the corporatism of the dictatorship, as well as its anti-democratic and anti-liberal narratives. Over the years, that same monarchy would be redefined and become a powerful institution for safeguarding the continuity of the regime founded on 18 July. In turn, in the process of drafting the Law of Succession in Franco's Cortes, it is clear that what was important to the attorneys was not to institutionalise the monarchy that would succeed Franco, but rather the caudillismo itself and, ultimately, the articulation of power in the dictatorship. The starting point for the Law of Succession and its monarchy was not normativity, but the political and symbolic use of the law.