For political reasons, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco limited the number of civilian Spanish workers sent to Germany during the Second World War. Despite agreeing to send 100,000, the number of workers never exceeded 9,550. Their impact on the German war economy was small. This paper demonstrates that, in limiting worker transfers, Franco went against his own economic incentives, considering that the Spanish government was taking a commission from the workers’ remittances. By limiting the number of workers sent, Franco satisfied the Allies’ pressure to minimise cooperation with Germany. In support of this argument, this article offers updated estimates for the number of workers, their skill levels and remittances. It also provides the first estimates of Spanish costs and income from the programme.

The impact of Francoist autarkic economic policy on Spain's economy is assessed using Domestic Resource Cost (DRC) as an indicator. This indicator compares the real opportunity cost of the primary factors used in the production of a certain good with its added value at international prices. Our results indicate that the inefficient allocation of productive factors induced by the interventionist economic policy resulted in a significant loss of efficiency for the economy. Only 50 out of 125 industries or, in other words, 39 per cent of Spanish industrial production, could be considered efficient. However, the paper also shows that the Spanish economy was in a good position to take advantage of the opportunities created by the 1959 reform, as most industrial production was on the verge of relative efficiency.