Fascism in Spain.: Local politics and government control in Francoist Catalonia:: Was Porciolism an Aperturista formula?

To contribute to the debate over the nature of the Francoist dictatorship, the article looks into a long experience in local government (1957-1973) in Barcelona, which served as a model for the government of big cities in the last period of Franco's era. If Franco's regime was built as a fascist one during the Civil War and first postwar years (1936-1942), it's necessary to evaluate its evolution after that, to know if subsequent political changes was enough to modify that characterization. We can see in Barcelona's case how political transformations in Franco's regime was only apparent. All reformist steps in local rule of big cities, like those of J.M. de Porcioles -Barcelona's mayor- in that period, were, in the end, increments in the mayor's control of the town council, and the central control of the mayor. So Porcioles' liberalization was not only perfectly compatible with the Local Act of 1945, very similar to an Italian one of 1934 under Mussolini, but reinforced that Act's most totalitarian elements.