Mussolini’s fascism did have an ethnic component as far as non-Italian ethnic minorities was concerned. For siding with the Allies in WWI, Italy gained former Austro-Hungarian territories which had about half a million Slovenes and Croats living in them—the Italian government tried to force these people to speak only Italian and to change their surnames to look Italian. I’m not sure about the German-speaking population of the South Tyrol, whether the same measures were taken there.
That’s true.
Franco, on the other hand, was a nationalist and the Spanish nation has always been very “diverse;” of course, Spain also governed a very “diverse” empire in its day. The Pope had specifically forbidden enslavement of the indigenous peoples in the New World, and the Spanish abided by that - Columbus actually went to jail for having brought back some Indians against their will and thus having violated the Pope’s order.
Franco felt that it was important to protect the Jews because they were the people of Jesus. As for Gypsies and other minority groups, the only side that ever targeted them was the left, because they were perceived to be conservative (loyal to the Spanish nation) and unruly. And Franco essentially distanced himself from Hitler after the bombing of Guernica and made Hitler back off after the famous “meeting in the train.”