The Legacy of Temporary Employment in Francoist Spain

Abstract This article revisits the levels of temporary employment in Franco’s Spain from an international perspective. Using a wide range of unexploited or novel data, I shed light for the first time on the incidence of temporary employment during the late Franco dictatorship, 1959–1975. The results show that fixed-term contracts reached 20–30 percent during this period and were not only concentrated in unstable employment branches such as agriculture, tourism, and construction. The analysis suggests that temporary employment was widespread in many service and industrial branches. Furthermore, external numerical flexibility was not confined to fixed-term contracts. Outsourcing, self-employment, family work, and the underground economy, particularly home work, played an essential role in many branches of the economy. In this context, women’s work constituted a key source of flexible employment for many branches of the Spanish economy. As a result, Spain was already an anomaly in the international context in terms of the prevalence of temporary work and labor regulation of temporary employment. This evidence suggests a reframing of debate on labor market functioning during the Francoist period and its legacy.