New laws that built a civil state apparatus.
In (2022), philosopher José Luis Villacañas Berlanga reinterprets Francisco Franco’s 40-year regime not just as an authoritarian dictatorship, but as a systematic "passive revolution" that fundamentally reshaped Spanish society from the top down. Core Themes & Theoretical Framework
A "genocide of the political" where the republican identity was systematically destroyed and replaced by a culture that lacked historical continuity with previous democratic traditions. The Transition & Legacy La Revolucion Pasiva De Franco Jose Luis Villac...
Villacañas draws on Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Life of Castruccio Castracani to describe Franco as a condotiero —a warlord or technician of power driven by a "void of interiority" and relentless ambition.
La revolución pasiva de Franco by José Luis Villacañas | eBook New laws that built a civil state apparatus
Villacañas identifies three pillars that allowed the regime to persist and eventually transition into the contemporary era:
Unlike Nazi or Fascist regimes where the State was a tool for a movement, Francoism is presented as "estatalista"—an effort to save the State and keep it in the same historical hands through a sovereign, constituent dictatorship. Three Dimensions of the Passive Revolution The Transition & Legacy Villacañas draws on Machiavelli’s
Using Antonio Gramsci's concept, the author argues that Francoism wasn't a static repression but an adaptive process that modernized the State while maintaining traditional power structures and preventing a genuine "active" revolution from the people.