El «Nuevo Estado» y la ilusión de la «democracia orgánica». El referéndum de 1947 y las elecciones municipales de 1948 en España

Abstract

Following the change of direction in the course of the Second World War in favour of the Allies, above all in 1944, the Franco regime was moved to abandon its National Syndicalist rhetoric as well as the symbolic paraphernalia of the Falange, which saw its institutional and social power challenged. In an unfavourable international climate, the single party system underwent a transformation, not only as a result of changes in the balance of power among the groups forming part of the FET-JONS, but particularly between the party and other institutions and groups in society. The most visible symbols of the "totalitarian way" were thereby abandoned in order to adapt the State to the new international climate. The Falange, however, as well as being an apparatus to control the institutions, continued to be used by the "New State" as a "social corset" in the political circumstances which unfolded in the immediate post-Second World War period, as was the case in the referendum of 1947 and municipal elections of 1948.