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Franco ruled Spain from 1939 to his death in 1975, although he did relinquish some of his powers in 1973. The victorious Nationalists were not monolithic, as, say, the Bolsheviks were in Russia, but included several factions: fascists (Falange), two types of monarchists (Carlist and Bourbon), and anti-Communists not dissimilar to American conservatives. The influence of the Falangists waned in the Nationalist government over the course of time. The Time article you cited from 1941 was at the height of the fascist and Catholic extremist influence. Franco was far more a pragmatist than an ideologue, but for whatever reason, the tiny Spanish Protestant community was not subject to direct state persecution after 1945. While Catholic extremists like Cardinal Segura of Seville agitated against the Protestant minority, he was effectively displaced in 1954 by the Vatican of Pope Pius XII with the blessing of Franco. Granted, Protestants were second class citizens, there were instances of mob violence in the late 1940s against Protestant churches led by Catholic extremists, and there were limits on their religious liberties. The restrictions lessened gradually over the post-World War II period, until 1967, when religious liberty was formally established. All this occured during Franco's rulership.

Economic liberalization also occurred in the same post-World War II era, as Spain moved from a fascist-style centrally directed economy to more of a free market model, not too much different than Pinochet did in Chile (though he was abolishing a Marxist model) or Ludwig Erhard and Konrad Adenauer did in Germany. (Pinochet and Adenauer were Catholics.) The bottom line is that Franco started out as Mussolini-like, but wound up more like Eamon de Valera (who was, BTW, half-Spanish)

As an aside, though you may not like it, the Catholic scholars of the School of Salamanca in 16th Century Spain were "Proto-Austrian" in their economic theories. The Catholic founders of Maryland, along with the Baptists in Rhode Island and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, pioneered religious freedom on this continent. There is a considerable body of Catholic social and political thought that favored limited government and individual liberty: Lord Acton, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, and Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th and early 20th Centuries; Joseph Sobran, Thomas Woods, Joseph Sirico, and many of the writers at LewRockwell.com in our own time.

The authoritarian, repressive model of Catholic monarchs like Philip II, Louis XIV, and Mary of England is far from the only type of polity found in the Catholic world or advocated by Catholic thinkers. Additionally, several of the Catholic libertarians appear aligned with the conservative and traditionalist factions of Catholicism, which would hardly make them vulnerable to charges of their being crypto-Protestants.