Dictablanda

Dictablanda is a dictatorship in which civil liberties are allegedly preserved rather than destroyed, and authoritarian and democratic features are combined.^[1][2] The word dictablanda is a pun on the Spanish word dictadura ("dictatorship"), replacing dura, which by itself is a word meaning 'hard', with blanda, meaning 'soft'.^[3]

The term was first used in Spain in 1930 when Dámaso Berenguer replaced Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja as the head of the ruling dictatorial government, and attempted to reduce tensions in the country by repealing some of the harsher measures that Primo de Rivera had introduced. It was also used to refer to the later years of Francisco Franco's Spanish State,^[4] and to the hegemonic 70-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico.^[5]

The same play on words can be seen in the example of the Portuguese word ditabranda or ditamole. In February 2009, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo ran a controversial editorial classifying the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985) as a ditabranda.^[6]

In Spanish, the term dictablanda is contrasted with democradura (a portmanteau of democracia and dictadura), meaning an illiberal democracy – a system in which the government and its leaders are elected, but which is relatively deficient in civil liberties.^[7]

See also

• Benevolent dictatorship
• Caudillo – Type of personalist leader wielding political power
• Operation Condor – US-backed repression campaign in South America
• Reign of Alfonso XIII of Spain