[Public health during Franco's regime].

We compare the most relevant characteristics of the evolution of public health as a science during Franco's regime with the behavior of significant parameters in the evolution of health care in Spain (mortality and morbidity rates, spending on health care, institutional development of the health care system). Our purpose was to characterize how the legacy inherited by current health care legislation in Spain has given rise to the problems currently faced. The backslide during the post-Civil War periiod as a result of the victors' identification of the advances achieved in the Second Republic with leftist policies, delayed modernization imposed by the accelerated process of industrialization, and obstacles caused by the consolidation of National Health Insurance, led to a paradigm based exclusively on medical care.