Francoist Spain remained
officially neutral during
World War II but maintained close political and economic ties to
Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy throughout the period of
the Holocaust. Before the war,
Francisco Franco had taken power in Spain at the head of a coalition of
fascist, monarchist, and conservative political factions in the
Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) with the aid of German and Italian military support. He was personally sympathetic to aspects of
Nazi ideology including its
anti-communism and
anti-Semitism. It appeared possible that Spain might enter into an alliance with the
Axis powers in 1940 and 1941. In this period, Franco's regime compiled
a register of Jews resident in Spain and added Jewish identity to its official identity documents. Other pre-existing anti-Jewish measures remained in force.
The regime failed to protect the vast majority of Spanish
Sephardic Jews living in
German-occupied Europe. It permitted 20,000 to 35,000 Jews to travel through Spanish territory on
transit visas from
France. In the post-war years, the Franco regime cultivated the idea that it had acted to protect Jews across Europe as a means to improve diplomatic relations with the former Allied powers.