Abelló Linde Centenary Book

THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION
940 was for Spain the second year of the Franco regime, while for
1Germany it was the first full one of a war in which Hitler and his Nazi
regime confronted the great Western democratic powers.
For Spain these early years of Francoism were of great political, economic and
social misery. Political misery as they were the years in which the most totalitarian
spirit predominated, years of brutal repression of the losers and all those who showed
the slightest opposition to the regime. Economic misery, the consequence of an absurd
policy of autarky, applied to a country in ruins after the Civil War and which was
isolated internationally when the Second World War ended. Social misery, represented
by the corruption of the regime and many of the civil servants.
In 1950 the anti-communism of the Franco regime brought about the end of
international isolation, especially from the United States, in what was the beginning of
the Cold War with the Soviet Union. American economic aid in return for military bases
produced a slight upturn in the Spanish economy during the early years of the 1950s.
General Franco’s eighth government, constituted on July 18 th 1951, with personalities
like Manuel Arburúa, Minister of Commerce, saw a change in economic policy. The
Spanish production levels of 1935 were reached once again in 1952, thirteen years
after the war had ended.
In 1945 Germany was defeated, destroyed and divided. However, this time the
victorious Western powers, unlike in 1919, did not enforce a policy of sanctions, but
they launched the Marshall Plan, economic and financial aid for the European
countries, without distinction between sides. No-one was prepared to include Spain in
the framework of the Plan, for its undemocratic regime and its acknowledged
friendship with Nazism and fascism. Thanks to the Marshall Plan and the efforts of the
American government, West Germany recovered fairly quickly from the disaster, so
that by 1950, five years after the end of the war, its volume of production was similar
to that of 1938. Five years that have to be compared with the thirteen in Spain, to
show us the economic backwardness that the first phase of Francoism entailed.
The end of the Civil War and the arrival of the new regime warrant no
comment in the minute books of Abelló, Oxígeno-Linde. Only the expression “Año de
la Victoria”, which figures after the date May 17 th 1939, when the first meeting of the
Board of Directors was held after the war, is any indication that a dictatorship had
begun that was to last thirty-seven years. But in the later meetings of the Board and
in the minutes of the General Meeting of Shareholders this addition is never repeated,
which was formally almost obligatory, aside from the traditional praise of the Caudillo,
missing from the minute books of Abelló, Oxígeno-Linde.
That 50% of the capital was in German hands was a situation unacceptable for
a regime totally against foreign investment, as it considered that this subordinated
Spanish interests to that of the country of origin of the capital. Article 5 of the Law of
Organization and Defence of National Industry, November 24 th 1939, said textually
(section e) that, “three quarters of the active share capital will be owned by
Spaniards, at least”.
Without the founding brothers and without the german partners (1940-1955) 97