Jorge Marco and Gutmaro Gomez Bravo, "The Fabric of Fear: Building Franco's New Society in Spain, 1936-1950" (Liverpool UP, 2023)

Jan 18, 2026

Historian Jorge Marco joins the discussion to delve into his book, co-authored with Gutmaro Gomez Bravo, which explores the mechanisms of Franco's oppressive regime in Spain from 1936 to 1950. He highlights the chilling tactics of military trials and the Catholic Church's role in justifying violence. Marco reveals how rumors and neighborly denunciations instilled fear in communities, while discussing the brutal reality of overcrowded prisons. His insights underscore how systematic repression and societal transformation forged a new Spain under Franco's rule.

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INSIGHT

Institutions And Everyday Repression Interact

The authors merge institutional and everyday approaches to show repression as interactive, not one-sided.
Studying both top-down plans and bottom-up practices reveals how Francoism built power through social collaboration.

INSIGHT

Summary Military Trials Built The Regime

Emergency summary military trials became a core foundation of Francoist state-building during 1936–39.
Rapid, rights-denying procedures institutionalized swift political cleansing and legalized mass repression.

INSIGHT

Community Of Death Forms Social Bonds

Collective violence forged a

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Jorge Marco and Gutmaro Gomez Bravo's book The Fabric of Fear: Building Franco's New Society in Spain, 1936-1950 (Liverpool UP, 2023) deals comprehensively with the process of Francoist state- and nation-building in Spain. Franco's chosen tools were mass repression and cleansing, undertaken both during the battlefield war of 1936-39 and in the decade afterwards, when war against defeated constituencies continued by institutional means. Mobilising its grass roots supporters made them complicit in the state's project. The complex process of cleansing and conversion of the political enemy required classifying soldiers from the defeated Republican army and Republican-zone civilians into pro-Franco, indifferent, or internal enemy. Many of the latter were either extrajudicially murdered or executed after cursory military trials. Classification used ultra-traditionalist Catholic means, including segregation and forced conversion.

The new society programme implemented between 1936 and 1950 was applied nation-wide to political activists, members of Republican parties, labour organisations, and (poor) urban and (landless) rural social constituencies. The Francoist project adapted to the changing national and international contexts across the period 1936-1950: from a civil war; through the period of relations with the Axis powers at the same time as receiving Nazi assistance in building up Franco's police force as an agent of repression; to the transformation of Franco into an anti-Communist client of the Cold War West. The Fabric of Fear addresses the social effects of the cleansing process on both victors and vanquished. On the one hand, Franco's violent policy forged a new society and tightened the links between the regime and its social base. On the other hand, the violence and coercion exerted on the vanquished resulted in their civil and legal death: they were expelled from Franco's national community and deprived of all rights in what became de facto an apartheid society in Spain.

Ethan Besser Fredrick is a graduate student in Modern Latin American history seeking his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the Transatlantic Catholic movements in Mexico and Spain during the early 20th century.

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