On the surface, few expected that Francisco Franco could become a strongman capable of imposing a harsh regime for four decades. He was a short, high-pitched military man with a shaky grasp of civilian affairs and little charisma. However he accomplished precisely that, prior to passing away naturally in a Madrid hospital, 50 years ago recently.
The Cautionary Tale of Outward Mediocrity
Nowadays, Franco serves as a caution that superficial averageness is not an obstacle to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a elusive, shrewd strategist. Franco's ambition was underpinned by an iron will, a glib indifference to violence and unbounded self-esteem.
His admirers and defenders – among them on the newly buoyant far right in the Spanish nation, the US and the UK – still claim Franco was not truly a autocrat, but rather a cherished saviour from Marxism. This is incorrect, but autocrats do not arise from nowhere.
"A significant portion of every society consists of people who actively want authoritarian rule," French political theorist Jean-François Revel noted the year after Franco's death: "either to exercise it themselves or – much more mysteriously – to yield to it." He thought the same: the true desire of people was to see and feel themselves governed.
The Reality of Violence and Oppression
Naturally, if Franco had been genuinely popular, there would have been no need for his 1936 coup against an elected leftwing government, or for the half a million dead of the ensuing Spanish civil war. Nor would he have shot 20,000 people later.
Franco grabbed power in a Spain still slumped in post-empire lethargy – a mighty empire having vanished the previous century. He aimed to make Spain great again. He blamed foreigners. They were either stealing Spain’s money, plotting against the country as part of a conspiracy theory, or corrupting local thoughts with foreign ideas: democratic systems, leftist ideas, Marxist doctrine, and his strange obsession, secret societies.
A Deliberately Slow and Violent War
The conflict was intentionally prolonged and violent behind the lines, alongside 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 subservient women, whose rights to their bodies, children, employment and property were cut, shelved, or handed over to male relatives.
After a vengeful victory, Franco confined the nation into a straitjacket of autarky and discarded the key. Economic self-sufficiency was adopted. Foreign capital and goods were avoided. "We possess all necessities," he said.
Starvation and Isolation
However, this was incorrect. The immediate result was starvation, with people dying on city streets in the early and mid-1940s. As he drove on a triumphal journey through the towns of southern regions, people pleaded 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 supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the second world war, Franco made Spain a pariah state, but he refused to step aside later. The Spanish people descended deeper into suffering.
Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation
Franco's conviction that he was both divinely chosen and infallible meant he insisted on a permanent rule in charge. A British ambassador complained that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", blind to his own ineptitude. Luck, and a absence of clear doctrine, came to Franco’s rescue. As the Cold War began, he polished his opposition to communism and the US rehabilitated him.
As a result, a failing economic system was eventually rescued and compelled to liberalize by the US and the IMF. In the 1960s, Spain was drawn into a regional economic growth that had begun earlier in neighboring countries. Suddenly, visitors were pouring on to Spanish beaches at Benidorm or on the southern coast. Numerous citizens remained unemployed, but the money they sent home after moving abroad also helped.
State Terror and Historical Amnesia
He gradually abandoned his most foolish concepts – from establishing a new realm to making synthetic gasoline with a "miraculous" formula – but never abandoned his primary goal of making Spaniards tame, compliant and disengaged. He invested massively in government intimidation from the 1936 takeover forward, deployed a strict, Goebbels-inspired press law, and ensured that multiple cohorts were educated in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing state-approved syllabus. Even into the seventies, autonomous political groups, democratic voting and labor organizations remained banned.
Franco also infantilised Spaniards, deeming them incapable of governing themselves. The most frightening aspect of his legacy was that so many believed him.
Return to Violence and Medieval Execution
When that fear-driven consensus started collapsing during the final years of his rule, he reverted to forceful control. Trigger-happy police, torture, execution teams and even that ancient killing method, the garrote, reappeared. This method saw a metal collar placed around a condemned person’s neck and constricted until it snapped their spine or stopped their breathing; it was employed by a European administration on its own citizens, in 1974.
Anxiety and Democratic Change
Nevertheless, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco chronicler, remembers experiencing sorrow as a boy, upon learning that Franco had died: "The grief of that youngster was shared at the time by countless citizens, who believed that the man who had just died had been the best possible solution for a country that was hard to rule," he wrote. "That is what they said at educational institutions, in the press, on the TV … "
The predominant sensation in reaction to Franco's demise was fear. After all, what happens after the figure at the center of a decades-long dictatorship passes away? Power was initially passed to the young king Juan Carlos, who supervised three years of reforms that ended with a referendum on the democratic constitution that remains in effect. The country continues as a vibrant, contentious democracy.
Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage
Heroic narratives arose to explain this. For the left, it was the result of pressure from brave street protesters, youth and laborers who fought continually with riot police. For the right, it was a indication of institutional prudence. For his supporters, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it forms part of the autocrat's heritage.
And therein lies a problem. At the Madrid copy shop where I printed out drafts of my latest publication on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the owner kept insisting that his parent stated he had prospered under Franco. His parent recalled, naturally, only the prosperity of the sixties.
The Danger of Ignorance
While promoting the local version of the publication, I have also discovered that the issues described by María Ramírez about childhood amid quiet about the regime are still present. College attendees inform me that their high school teachers were still avoiding the topic recently. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a major concern.
Lack of knowledge is dangerous. It is understandable that almost one in five youth think his regime was beneficial for Spain. The only way to alter this is to end the quiet and educate young Spaniards what the Franco era was really about.
