structural:expansion, information:highlighting
Economic policy

The Civil War ravaged the Spanish economy. Infrastructure had been damaged, workers killed, and daily business severely hampered. For more than a decade after Franco's victory, the devastated economy recovered very slowly. Franco initially pursued a policy of autarky, cutting off almost all international trade. The policy had devastating effects, and the economy stagnated. Only black marketeers could enjoy an evident affluence.

On the brink of bankruptcy, a combination of pressure from the United States and the IMF managed to convince the regime to adopt a free market economy. Many of the old guard in charge of the economy were replaced by technocrats (technocrata), despite some initial opposition from Franco. The regime took its first faltering steps toward abandoning its pretensions of self-sufficiency and towards a transformation of Spain's economic system. Pre-Civil War industrial production levels were regained in the early 1950s, though agricultural output remained below prewar levels until 1958. The years from 1951 to 1956 were marked by substantial economic progress, but the reforms of the period were only sporadically implemented, and they were not well coordinated. From the mid-1950s there was a slow but steady acceleration in economic activity, but the relative lack of growth (compared to the rest of Western Europe) eventually forced the Franco regime to allow the introduction of liberal economic policies in the late 1950s. During the pre-stabilization years of 1957–1959, Spanish economic planners implemented partial measures such as moderate anti-inflationary adjustments and incremental moves to integrate Spain into the global economy, but external developments and a worsening domestic economic crisis forced them to adopt more sweeping changes. A reorganisation of the Council of Ministers in early 1957 had brought a group of younger men, most of whom were educated in economics and had experience, to the key ministries. The process of integrating the country into the world economy was further facilitated by the reforms of the 1959 Stabilization and Liberalization Plan.

When Franco replaced his ideological ministers with the apolitical technocrats, the regime implemented several development policies that included deep economic reforms. After a recession, growth took off from 1959, creating an economic boom that lasted until 1974, and became known as the " Spanish miracle ".

Concurrent with the absence of social reforms, and the economic power shift, a tide of mass emigration commenced to other European countries, and to a lesser extent, to South America. Emigration helped the regime in two ways. The country got rid of populations it would not have been able to keep in employment, and the emigrants supplied the country with much needed monetary remittances.

During the 1960s, the wealthy classes of Francoist Spain experienced further increases in wealth, particularly those who remained politically faithful, while a burgeoning middle class became visible as the "economic miracle" progressed. International firms established factories in Spain where salaries were low, company taxes very low, strikes forbidden and workers' health or state protections almost unheard of. State-owned firms like the car manufacturer SEAT, truck builder Pegaso, and oil refiner INH, massively expanded production. Furthermore, Spain was virtually a new mass market. Spain became the second-fastest growing economy in the world between 1959 and 1973, just behind Japan. By the time of Franco's death in 1975, Spain still lagged behind most of Western Europe but the gap between its per capita GDP and that of the leading Western European countries had narrowed greatly, and the country had developed a large industrialised economy.