On the surface, hardly anyone expected that Francisco Franco might become a authoritarian ruler able to imposing a brutal regime over 40 years. He appeared as a small-statured, high-pitched military man with a poor understanding of civilian affairs and little personal appeal. However he did exactly that, prior to passing away naturally in a Madrid hospital, 50 years ago recently.
The Warning of Outward Mediocrity
To this day, Franco acts as a warning that superficial averageness is not an obstacle to the extremely driven. Behind the dull facade lay a slippery, clever strategist. His drive was underpinned by an iron will, a casual disregard to brutality and unbounded self-confidence.
His admirers and defenders – among them on the resurgent extreme right in Spain, the US and the United Kingdom – still claim Franco was never really a dictator, but rather a cherished rescuer from Marxism. This is incorrect, but autocrats do not arise from thin air.
"Some important part of any society consists of people who actively want authoritarian rule," French political theorist Jean-François Revel noted the year after Franco's death: "to wield it personally or – much more mysteriously – to yield to it." He thought the identical thing: the true desire of people was to see and feel themselves governed.
The Truth of Violence and Oppression
Naturally, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no need for his 1936 military insurrection against an elected leftwing government, or for the half a million dead of the subsequent civil conflict. Nor would he have executed 20,000 individuals afterwards.
He seized control in a Spain still slumped in post-imperial ennui – a powerful realm having vanished the century before. Franco wanted to make Spain great again. He accused outsiders. They were stealing Spain’s money, conspiring against it as part of a conspiracy theory, or corrupting local thoughts with external ideologies: liberal democracy, leftist ideas, communism, and his strange obsession, secret societies.
A Calculated, Brutal Conflict
The conflict was intentionally prolonged and brutal in occupied areas, alongside a ruthless elimination of opponents in an attempt to "purify" this tainted Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of allegedly "masculine" men and subservient 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 straitjacket of autarky and discarded the key. Economic self-sufficiency was adopted. Foreign capital and goods were avoided. "We have everything we need," he said.
Starvation and Isolation
But he was wrong. The direct outcome was famine, with people perishing in urban areas in 1940 and 1945. While traveling on a triumphal journey through the towns of Jaén and Málaga, people pleaded at his car window. "Señor Franco, for God’s sake, a piece of bread," they said. Even German representatives in Spain, his allies, complained that a impressive exterior hid the horrific reality. By backing Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco made Spain a outcast nation, but he declined to relinquish power afterwards. The Spanish people descended deeper into suffering.
Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation
His belief that he was both divinely chosen and always right meant he demanded a permanent rule in charge. A British ambassador remarked that he lived in a "thick fog of self-satisfaction", unaware of his own ineptitude. Fortune, and a absence of clear doctrine, came to Franco’s rescue. As the Cold War began, he polished his opposition to communism and the United States rehabilitated him.
Consequently, a disastrous economy was ultimately saved and compelled to liberalize by the United States and the IMF. During the sixties, Spain was drawn into a regional economic growth that had started long before in Italy and Portugal. Abruptly, visitors were flocking to Spanish beaches at coastal resorts or on the southern coast. Many Spaniards still could not find work, but the remittances after moving abroad also provided relief.
Authoritarian Control and Forgotten History
He gradually abandoned his most foolish concepts – from founding a new empire to producing artificial fuel with a "magic" formula – but never abandoned his primary goal of making Spaniards tame, compliant and politically apathetic. He invested massively in government intimidation from the 1936 coup onwards, deployed a strict, propaganda-based press law, and ensured that multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing Francoist curriculum. As late as the 1970s, autonomous political groups, democratic voting and labor organizations remained banned.
He also treated as children Spaniards, deeming them incapable of governing themselves. The scariest part of his heritage was that a large number believed him.
Return to Violence and Medieval Execution
Once that fear-based agreement started collapsing during the final years of his regime, he defaulted back to forceful control. Aggressive law enforcement, torture, firing squads and even that medieval form of execution, the strangulation device, reappeared. The latter saw a metal collar fastened around a condemned person’s neck and tightened until it broke their neck or stopped their breathing; it was being used by a European administration on its population, during the seventies.
Anxiety and Democratic Change
However, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a highly skeptical Franco chronicler, recalls 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 optimal answer for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "This was the narrative at educational institutions, in the media, on the television … "
The predominant sensation in reaction to Franco's death was fear. Ultimately, what happens after the figure at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship passes away? Authority was transferred to the monarch Juan Carlos, who oversaw three years of reforms that ended with a referendum on the democratic constitution that still holds today. The country continues as a vibrant, disputatious democratic state.
Heroic Narratives and Twisted Legacies
Inspiring accounts 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 twisted version of all, it forms part of the dictator’s legacy.
And here rests a issue. At the Madrid copy shop where I printed out versions of my latest publication on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the proprietor kept maintaining that his parent stated he had prospered under Franco. His father remembered, naturally, only the prosperity of the 1960s.
The Danger of Ignorance
While promoting the local version of the book, I have also realised that the issues outlined by María Ramírez about childhood surrounded by silence about the dictatorship are still with us. College attendees tell me that their high school teachers were still avoiding the subject just a year or two ago. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a huge worry.
Lack of knowledge is risky. It is understandable that almost one in five young people believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The only way to alter this is to break the silence and teach young Spaniards what Francoism was truly like.
