Franco migration policy: Rapprochement measures with the Spanish residents in Iberoamerica

Throughout the 20th century, the State tried to assume a guiding role regarding Spanish migratory policy. However, several different vested interests influenced and even determined this model, particularly after the end of the Civil War. At the beginning of the Franco regime, the authorities implemented a series of exceptional measures that restricted the right of Spaniards to emigrate. Nevertheless, they subsequently modified the legal framework, giving way to the so-called developmentalist stage that favoured the emigration of surplus workers to other countries. The debates that emerged among some intellectuals and above all among the administrative actors of the State in the field of emigration as a result of those attempts by the Franco regime to introduce changes in its legal corpus are analyzed in this article.