Internally wasn’t much difference between Franco and Mussolini. Difference, for the most part Franco kept his antics within Spain (yes I know they sent a token division to fight in Russia with the Nazis, but he also refused to attack Gibraltar).
Refused to or feared to?
Like Solzhenitsyn noted, the only thing that such people respect is “the big fist and nothing else”. An attack on Gibraltar would have brought the big fist of the Allies crashing down on him.
I made that point on Reddit.
If Italy had stay neutral, or actually followed through on their commitment to protect Austria from German takeover, Italy would have been just like Spain post-war, just likely abandoning Fascism in the 50s because it was never that powerful of a force, and Mussolini wasn’t really that much in control of the place as he made it out to be.