Postwar Spain without Franco

[uk 75]

Since Franco's death Spain has become a key player in the EU and NATO.
Reading how the dictator resisted attempts to have Spain play a more active role in WW2 alongside Germany and Italy got me wondering.
Franco decides that Gibraltar is worth the risk of joining the Axis. As a result in 1945 Spain like Germany and Italy falls to the Allied armies and is "denazified".
As in Germany and Italy a democratic republic is established underpinned by US money.
Spain is now free to take part in civil and military programmes like Italy in particular.
Spanish equivalents of Italian aircraft, ships and other hardware come to mind.

 

[Archibald]

He was a deeply cautious SOB, that's the exact reason why (unfortunately) he didn't ended like Mussolini. In 1940 he kept Hitler at bay by asking sky-high assistance - against entering the fight besides the Axis powers. After their october 1940 meeting crazy Adolf famously said he would rather go to his dentist than bargaining a second time with Franco (or maybe it was his proctologist ? since both men were assholes, ha ha ha).
And unfortunately for spanish people, this (cautiouness, not the proctologist) granted him 30 more years after WWII. Way too long. A pity ETA couldn't send him to orbit as they did to his annointed successor, Admiral Carrero Blanco. The man who was born on earth, lived his life at sea and died in the sky, LMAO. First spanish astronaut, long before Pedro Duque.

 

[Apophenia]

... a democratic republic is established underpinned by US money...

In the RW, Franco's regime was underpinned by US money - Falangists are preferable to Commies seemed to be the thinking. Washington basically bought the 'Generalissimo' out of naughty corner in 1953 to gain access to four military bases. Internal systemic changes helped but el milagro español was effectively bankrolled by US largesse.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Western Europe, Volume VII, Part 2
309. Intelligence Report No. 7772 August 7, 1958 [...]

III. Present and Future Spanish Foreign Policy

The single most important foreign policy achievement of Franco was the signing in September 1953 of bilateral economic and defense arrangements with the US. After Spain was admitted to the UN and acquired observer status at the OEEC in 1955, and associate membership in January 1958, the major remaining obstacle to Spain’s full reintegration into the Western European community was its exclusion from NATO.