On the surface, hardly anyone believed that Francisco Franco might become a strongman able to imposing a harsh dictatorship across four decades. He was a small-statured, squeaky-voiced military man with a poor understanding of civilian affairs and little charisma. But he did exactly that, before succumbing to natural causes in a hospital in Madrid, half a century ago recently.
The Warning of Outward Mediocrity
To this day, Franco acts as a warning that outward mediocrity is not an obstacle to the ruthlessly ambitious. Behind the dull facade lay a elusive, shrewd operator. Franco's ambition was supported by an unyielding determination, a casual disregard to brutality and limitless self-esteem.
Those who praise and defend him – among them on the newly buoyant extreme right in the Spanish nation, the US and the United Kingdom – continue to assert Franco was not truly a dictator, but instead a cherished rescuer from communism. They are wrong, but autocrats do not emerge from nowhere.
"Some important part of every society consists of people who desire authoritarian rule," political thinker from France Jean-François Revel observed the following year Franco's demise: "either to exercise it themselves or – much more mysteriously – to submit to it." He thought the identical thing: 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 military insurrection against an democratically chosen progressive administration, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the subsequent civil conflict. He would not have shot 20,000 people later.
He seized control in a Spain still slumped in post-imperial ennui – a mighty empire having disappeared the previous century. He aimed to make Spain great again. He accused outsiders. They were either plundering the nation's wealth, conspiring against it as part of a conspiracy theory, or corrupting local thoughts with external ideologies: democratic systems, socialism, Marxist doctrine, and his bizarre bugbear, secret societies.
A Calculated, Brutal Conflict
The conflict was intentionally prolonged and brutal in occupied areas, accompanied by a ruthless elimination of dissenters in an attempt to "cleanse" this contaminated Spain. The reimagined nation also had to be a place of allegedly "virile" men and obedient women, whose rights to their bodies, offspring, work and possessions were cut, shelved, or transferred to male relatives.
Following a punitive win, Franco locked Spain into a corset of self-reliance and discarded the key. Autarky was embraced. Foreign capital and goods were avoided. "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. While traveling on a triumphal journey 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 grandiose facade hid the horrific reality. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco turned Spain into a outcast nation, but he declined to relinquish power later. The Spanish people descended deeper into suffering.
Overconfidence and Political Revival
His belief that he was both divinely chosen and infallible meant he demanded a lifelong term in charge. A UK diplomat complained that he lived in a "thick fog of self-satisfaction", unaware of his own ineptitude. Luck, and a lack of any definable ideology, came to Franco’s rescue. As the Cold War began, he polished his opposition to communism and the United States restored his reputation.
Consequently, a disastrous economy was ultimately saved and compelled to liberalize by the US and the IMF. During the sixties, Spain was drawn into a regional economic growth that had begun earlier in neighboring countries. Abruptly, visitors were pouring on to Spanish beaches at Benidorm or on the Costa del Sol. Many Spaniards remained unemployed, but the money they sent home after moving abroad also helped.
State Terror and Historical Amnesia
Franco quietly dropped his most stupid ideas – from founding a new empire to producing artificial fuel with a "miraculous" formula – but never abandoned his central aim of making Spaniards tame, compliant and politically apathetic. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 takeover onwards, deployed a rigid, propaganda-based media regulation, and ensured that multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and historically amnesiac state-approved syllabus. As late as the 1970s, autonomous political groups, free and fair elections 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 accepted this.
Reversion to Brutality and Ancient Methods
Once that fear-based agreement finally began to fall apart during the last decade of his rule, he reverted to violent domination. Trigger-happy police, abuse, firing squads and even that medieval form of execution, the garrote, reappeared. This method saw a metal collar fastened around a condemned person’s neck and constricted until it snapped their spine or stopped their breathing; it was being used by a western European government on its own citizens, during the seventies.
Fear and the Transition to Democracy
However, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a highly skeptical Franco biographer, remembers feeling sad as a boy, upon learning that Franco had died: "The sadness 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. "This was the narrative at educational institutions, in the press, on the TV … "
The predominant sensation in reaction to Franco's demise was fear. Ultimately, what occurs after the figure at the centre of a long-standing autocracy passes away? Authority was transferred to the young king Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that ended with a referendum on the democratic constitution that still holds today. Spain remains a vibrant, contentious democratic state.
Heroic Narratives and Twisted Legacies
Heroic narratives arose to explain this. From the leftist perspective, it was the result of activism from brave street protesters, youth and laborers who clashed repeatedly with riot police. For the right, it was a sign of institutional prudence. For Francoists, in the most twisted version of all, it forms part of the dictator’s legacy.
And therein lies a problem. In a Madrid printing store where I printed out versions of my latest publication on the dictator, El Generalisimo, the proprietor kept insisting that his father stated he had prospered under Franco. His parent recalled, naturally, only the economic boom of the sixties.
The Danger of Ignorance
During the promotion of the local version of the book, I have also discovered that the issues described by María Ramírez about childhood amid quiet about the dictatorship are still with us. College attendees tell me that their high school teachers were still avoiding the topic recently. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a major concern.
Ignorance is risky. It is understandable that nearly 20% young people believe his dictatorship was good for Spain. The only way to alter this is to break the silence and teach young Spaniards what Francoism was really about.
