In his attempt to assess the contribution of the so-called Vertical Syndicate to the progress of Spanish society, Selgas (1974) asserted that for thirty years it had provided both employers and employees ‘adequate instruments for the promotion and defense of their professional interests in a climate of collaboration and social harmony’. The roll of honour in the achievement of such harmony included José Antonio Girón de Velasco, for initiating social security provisions; Fermín Sanz Orrio, for the Law of Collective Contracts; Jesús Romeo Gorría, for extending the social security net; José Solis Ruíz, for promoting greater participation and so ‘modernizing’ the syndicate; and all those who had worked anonymously in the ‘social sections’ of the different syndicates, and in the workers' councils. In this view, the evolution of the Vertical Syndicate sat squarely within a corporate tradition, which was ‘reestablished in almost pristine form in the Spain of Primo de Rivera and Franco’, who ‘attempted to deal with the phenomenon of mass-man by erecting corporate structures that provided for class harmony rather than conflict, structured participation rather than rootlessness and alienation’ (Wiarda:1973).