Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars View Post
5) El Milagro Español - surprised you missed that one, actually. That's a pretty big one.
The Spanish miracle? Gah!

And how, pray, did the democratic European nations fare economically in this period? To answer my own question: they had post-war econic miracles of their own. Each one far surpassing that of Spain. Did I say far surpassing? That's not true. It's beyond that. True is: Free Europe experienced an economic explosion unique in its history. The German and Austrian Wirtschaftwunder, the French Trente Glorieuses, Italy's extraordinary boom into an industrialisation Great Power.

Whereas Spain under Franco moved from 'starving hellhole' to simply 'backward'. And I shall not even mention that Franco himself was to no small extent responsible for the first part, the 'starving hellhole'.

Nope, I'm afraid that I didn't miss it. I count it as one of the many near criminal legacies of Franco. Because of Franco, Spain performed much, much, much worse than the comparable free nations of Europe during this time.

Franco's 'economic miracle' is comparable to the East German post-war 'economic miracle'. Another one of those closed societies. Another society whose citizens subjects and fellow travellers were led to believe, or strangely still believe, that some economic miracle took place.


This subject frustrates me to no end. It is so glaringly obvious that the democratic European nations after WWII economically drastically outperformed both the Communist and the authoritarian regimes. Yet, fellow travellers of both kind persist and persist and persist in singing the praise of the economic miracles of the dictatorships. They did it in 1958. And in 1968. And in 1978. And in 1988. And in 1998. And in 2008.