Fascist Era Elites (1). Family matters: ministerial elites and the articulation of the Francoist dictatorship

The question of the integration of ‘political families’ in the New State, and its position at the various centres of decision making, is essential in understanding Francoism, not so much its nature (how ‘fascist’ it was), as its shifting policies. In order to explain the relationship between the regime and these families, this paper addresses the following four aspects: 1. The birth of the regime from a historical perspective and how the different forces of the Francoist coalition integrated themselves into the new institutions; 2. How the dictator articulated his power in the nascent New State and his relations to those political families; 3. The composition, functions, means and political power of the single party, the Falange, during the ‘Fascist’ period of 1939–1945; and finally, 4. The permanent organizational arrangement, both formal and informal, which shaped the dictatorship’s mechanisms for decision making.