I’ve been pondering over the best way to answer this for a little while now, and am still not completely sure. There are two major problems in providing a neat, cohesive answer. The first is that for the Franco regime in particular (my answer will shamefully neglect Salazar I’m afraid!), there is no absolute consensus as to whether Franco was a fascist or not, particularly within Spain. The continued uncertainty within Spain is perhaps a function of direct experience of the regime, the continued political utility of the label (given that certain contemporary political parties are still viewed as the heirs of Francoism) and the political vocabulary developed during the civil war itself. For many Republican supporters, ‘fascists’ was ubiquitous shorthand for their opponents, and the war itself was construed explicitly as an anti-fascist war, partly due to Franco’s international allies in Hitler and Mussolini, but certainly encompassing Franco himself. In contrast, international scholars of the Franco regime are generally less willing to unambiguously label Franco a fascist, although it certainly isn’t completely unknown.

The other fundamental issue is how to define fascism itself. I’m a bit uneasy to expound too much here, as there are many users here with a much more nuanced and complete knowledge of the history and theory of fascism, but it’s certainly the case that different scholars emphasise different traits and ideological features, often arriving at quite different conclusions (as a sidenote: the FAQ really needs a section on fascism as an ideology, although there are many, many excellent posts that come up in a search). Of the approaches I’m familiar with, only the traditional Marxist definition – that fascism represented the final, desperate defence of monopoly capitalism through political terror – really seems to encompass Franco. Yet it’s not entirely a coincidence that the Marxist definition is most commonly criticised for its lack of insight into fascism’s radicalism (it essentially handwaves radical or revolutionary elements as rhetorical devices designed to win over adherents to be abandoned once in power). To my mind, it’s this lack of a radical or revolutionary vision that makes Franco a poor fascist. Franco was a conservative, even a reactionary, and lacked the fascination with modernity and remodeling of society that were hallmarks of unequivocally fascist regimes.

This in turn meant that there were some key fascist elements missing in the Spanish context. Francoist Spain was not a true one-party state – while there were initial moves towards enshrining the Falange as Spain’s only political party, this was achieved by merging it with other groups that had supported the Nationalists, which in practice preserved political factionalism and mitigated against a monolithic ideological position. Moreover, this party never inseparably entwined itself with state institutions as seen in Italy or Germany, and in practice the Franco regime remained coalition-based, with different conservative perspectives represented at cabinet level. After 1943, it wasn’t even referred to as a party – it was now a ‘national movement’. This was probably quite cynical, reflecting Franco’s desire to distance himself from the losing side of the Second World War, but did also reflect a real decline in the centrality of the party to the regime over the course of its early years.

I also don’t think that Franco fits a totalitarian model in other ways. The expanded role of the Catholic Church in particular points away from totalitarian ambitions. With Catholicism allotted a prominent, central role in society, it’s harder to sustain a model by which the state, party and leader seek to subsume the totality of human existence. To be sure, church and state were by no means separate under Franco, but this was hardly a complete departure from the broad sweep of Spanish history, with reductions in clerical influence under the Republic a very recent, temporary phenomenon. The Catholic Church was also by its nature a supra-national point of authority in this system, an arrangement that is difficult to imagine under a more ideologically pure fascist regime. The Army too remained an independent power base – largely loyal to Franco but not fully institutionally integrated into the regime or party, and remaining as a bastion of traditionalism in Spanish society.

I personally think Franco is better compared with other interwar authoritarian regimes throughout Eastern and Central Europe, which accommodated or even relied on fascist support but ultimately remained under the control of traditional political and military elites. Franco clearly had a willingness to borrow fascist methods, symbols and rhetoric when it suited him, but was not attached to them beyond the extent they offered a certain utility to him in obtaining and keeping power.

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In terms of further reading, Stanley Payne is the most prominent scholar who combines detailed knowledge of Spain and the Franco regime with a serious interest in the broader history of fascism, so his (rather extensive) body of work is a natural starting point. He is rather forceful in rejecting the Franco as fascist position. It’s worth noting though that Payne is regarding with suspicion by some scholars, particularly on the left, who accuse him of being an apologist for Franco. As such, his evaluation of Franco’s ideology is probably best balanced with other perspectives. Paul Preston, for instance, has written extensively on the Franco regime from a much more critical perspective, although I believe he also rejects the fascist label.