Initially, few suspected that Francisco Franco might become a authoritarian ruler able to imposing a brutal dictatorship for 40 years. He was a short, squeaky-voiced military man with a poor understanding of civilian affairs and no charisma. But he accomplished precisely that, prior to passing away naturally in a hospital in Madrid, 50 years ago recently.
The Warning of Outward Mediocrity
Nowadays, Franco acts as a caution that outward mediocrity is no barrier to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a slippery, shrewd operator. Franco's ambition was fueled by an unyielding determination, a casual disregard to violence and unbounded self-confidence.
Those who praise and defend him – including some on the resurgent extreme right in the Spanish nation, the United States and the UK – continue to assert Franco was not truly a autocrat, but rather a beloved rescuer from Marxism. This is incorrect, but autocrats do not arise from nowhere.
"Some important part of any society consists of people who actively want tyranny," French political theorist Jean-François Revel observed the following year Franco's death: "to wield it personally or – far more puzzlingly – to submit to it." He thought the same: the true desire of people was to experience being ruled.
The Reality of Violence and Oppression
Of course, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no necessity for his 1936 coup against an democratically chosen progressive administration, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the ensuing Spanish civil war. He would not have shot 20,000 individuals later.
He seized control in a Spain mired in post-imperial ennui – a mighty empire having vanished the previous century. He aimed to make Spain great again. He accused outsiders. They were stealing Spain’s money, plotting against the country as part of a Marxist-Jewish-masonic plot, or corrupting local thoughts with foreign ideas: democratic systems, leftist ideas, Marxist doctrine, and his bizarre bugbear, Freemasonry.
A Calculated, Brutal Conflict
The conflict was intentionally prolonged and violent behind the lines, accompanied by a bloody purging of dissenters in an attempt to "cleanse" this contaminated Spain. The reimagined nation also had to be a place of supposedly "masculine" men and obedient women, whose rights to their bodies, offspring, employment and property were cut, postponed, or transferred to husbands and fathers.
After a vengeful victory, Franco locked Spain into a corset of self-reliance and discarded the key. Economic self-sufficiency was adopted. Foreign capital and goods were shunned. "We possess all necessities," he said.
Famine and Pariah Status
However, this was incorrect. The direct outcome was famine, with people dying on city streets in 1940 and 1945. As he drove on a victory tour through the towns of southern regions, people begged at his car window. "Please, Mr. Franco, some bread," they said. Even Nazi officials in Spain, his supporters, complained that a impressive exterior hid the ghastly truth. By backing Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco turned Spain into a outcast nation, but he refused to step aside afterwards. The Spanish people descended deeper into suffering.
Overconfidence and Political Revival
His belief that he was both selected by God and always right meant he insisted on a permanent rule in charge. A UK diplomat complained that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", blind to his own incompetence. Luck, and a absence of clear doctrine, came to Franco’s rescue. When the cold war started, he polished his anti-communist credentials and the US rehabilitated him.
Consequently, a disastrous economy was ultimately saved and compelled to liberalize by the United States and the International Monetary Fund. In the 1960s, Spain was swept into a southern European economic boom that had started long before in Italy and Portugal. Suddenly, visitors were pouring on to Spanish beaches at Benidorm or on the Costa del Sol. Numerous citizens still could not find work, but the money they sent home after emigrating to northern Europe also provided relief.
State Terror and Historical Amnesia
He gradually abandoned his most foolish concepts – from establishing a new realm to producing artificial fuel with a "magic" formula – but never abandoned his primary goal of making Spaniards docile, compliant and disengaged. He invested massively in state terror from the 1936 takeover forward, implemented a rigid, Goebbels-inspired press law, and ensured that generations of Spaniards were schooled in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing state-approved syllabus. As late as the 1970s, independent political parties, free and fair elections and labor organizations remained banned.
Franco also infantilised Spaniards, considering them unable of self-rule. The most frightening aspect of his heritage was that a large number believed him.
Reversion to Brutality and Ancient Methods
When that fear-driven consensus started collapsing during the last decade of his rule, he defaulted back to forceful control. Trigger-happy police, abuse, firing squads and even that medieval form of execution, the garrote, reappeared. The latter saw a iron band fastened around a condemned person’s neck and constricted until it broke their neck or stopped their breathing; it was being used by a European administration on its population, in 1974.
Fear and the Transition to Democracy
However, the scholar Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a highly skeptical Franco chronicler, recalls experiencing sorrow as a boy, upon hearing the news that Franco had died: "The sadness of that youngster was shared at the time by millions of Spaniards, who believed that the man who had just died had been the optimal answer for a country that was hard to rule," he wrote. "That is what they said at educational institutions, in the media, on the television … "
The main feeling in response to Franco's death was anxiety. Ultimately, what happens after the man at the center of a decades-long dictatorship dies? Authority was transferred to the monarch Juan Carlos, who oversaw three years of reforms that ended with a public vote on the founding document that remains in effect. The country continues as a vibrant, contentious democracy.
Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage
Inspiring accounts arose to explain this. From the leftist perspective, it was the outcome of activism from brave street protesters, students and workers who clashed repeatedly with security forces. For the right, it was a indication of institutional prudence. For his supporters, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it constitutes a part of the autocrat's heritage.
And therein lies a issue. In a Madrid printing store where I produced drafts of my latest publication on the dictator, the leader, the proprietor kept insisting that his father stated he had lived well under Franco. His father remembered, of course, only the economic boom of the 1960s.
The Danger of Ignorance
During the promotion of the Spanish edition of the publication, I have also realised that the problems outlined by María Ramírez about childhood amid quiet about the regime are still with us. University students tell me that their secondary educators were still avoiding the topic recently. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a major concern.
Ignorance is risky. It is understandable that almost one in five youth think his regime was beneficial for Spain. The only way to change that is to end the quiet and educate the new generation what Francoism was really about.
