8. Spain in the Golden Age: Reintegration into the International Economy (1960–1973)

After the Second World War, Western Europe experienced a rapid and successful economic reconstruction. Once completed, the era of the greatest economic prosperity in history—the Golden Age—was inaugurated. However, the Spain of the 1950s did not fully participate in the wave of general welfare, as it was too much autarkic. In Spain, the Golden Age would not truly arrive until after the implementation of the Stabilization Plan, that also was a liberalization blueprint. With the opening to the world, the Spanish economy took advantage, at last, of the growth opportunities provided by the dynamism of the international economy to industrialize and to modernize agriculture through mass emigration to Western Europe and to big Spanish cities. It converged intensely to European standards. Once high growth was activated, Franco’s regime came back to interventionism to keep economic power intact.