Initially, not many believed that Francisco Franco would become a strongman capable of imposing a ruthless dictatorship for 40 years. He appeared as a small-statured, squeaky-voiced army officer with a poor understanding of non-military matters and no charisma. But he achieved just that, before passing away naturally in a Madrid hospital, 50 years ago this week.
The Warning of Outward Mediocrity
Even today, Franco stands as a warning that outward mediocrity is not an obstacle to the ruthlessly ambitious. Behind the dull facade lay a slippery, shrewd strategist. Franco's ambition was supported by an iron will, a glib indifference to violence and unbounded self-confidence.
His admirers and defenders – among them on the resurgent far right in the Spanish nation, the US and the United Kingdom – continue to assert Franco was not truly a autocrat, but rather a cherished saviour from Marxism. This is incorrect, but dictators do not arise from thin air.
"A significant portion of any society is made up of people who actively want tyranny," political thinker from France Jean-François Revel noted the year after Franco's death: "to wield it personally or – much more mysteriously – to submit to it." He thought the same: what people really wanted was to experience being ruled.
The Reality of Violence and Oppression
Of course, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no need for his 1936 coup against an elected leftwing government, or for the half a million dead of the subsequent civil conflict. He would not have shot 20,000 individuals later.
He seized control in a Spain mired in post-empire lethargy – a powerful realm having vanished the century before. Franco wanted to restore Spain's greatness. 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, socialism, Marxist doctrine, and his bizarre bugbear, Freemasonry.
A Calculated, Brutal Conflict
The conflict was deliberately slow and brutal in occupied areas, alongside a bloody purging of opponents in an attempt to "purify" this tainted Spain. The reimagined nation also had to be a place of supposedly "virile" men and obedient women, whose bodily autonomy, offspring, work and property were reduced, shelved, or handed over to husbands and fathers.
Following a punitive win, Franco confined the nation into a straitjacket of autarky and discarded the key. Autarky was adopted. International investment and products were shunned. "We possess all necessities," he said.
Starvation and Isolation
But he was wrong. The immediate result was starvation, with people perishing in urban areas in the early and mid-1940s. While traveling on a victory tour through the towns of Jaén and Málaga, people begged at his car window. "Please, Mr. Franco, some bread," they said. Even Nazi officials in Spain, his allies, complained that a grandiose facade 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. Spaniards sank further into misery.
Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation
His belief that he was both divinely chosen and infallible meant he demanded a permanent rule in charge. A British ambassador complained that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", unaware of 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 US 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 flocking to Spanish beaches at coastal resorts or on the southern coast. Many Spaniards still could not find work, but the money they sent home after emigrating to northern Europe also helped.
State Terror and Historical Amnesia
Franco quietly dropped his most stupid ideas – from establishing a new realm to making synthetic gasoline with a "magic" formula – but never abandoned his central aim of making Spaniards tame, compliant and disengaged. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 takeover onwards, deployed a rigid, propaganda-based media regulation, and made sure multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and historically amnesiac state-approved syllabus. As late as the 1970s, independent political parties, democratic voting and trade unions remained banned.
He also treated as children Spaniards, considering them unable of governing themselves. The scariest part of his legacy was that so many 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 violent domination. Trigger-happy police, abuse, firing squads and even that ancient killing method, the garrote, returned. This method saw a metal collar fastened around a convict's throat and constricted until it snapped their spine or cut off their air supply; it was being used by a western European government on its population, in 1974.
Anxiety and Democratic Change
However, the scholar Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a highly skeptical Franco chronicler, recalls feeling sad as a boy, upon learning that Franco had died: "The grief of that youngster was felt at the time by countless citizens, who thought 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 school, in the media, on the television … "
The main feeling in reaction to Franco's demise was anxiety. After all, what occurs after the man at the center of a long-standing autocracy dies? Authority was transferred to the young king Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that culminated in a referendum on the democratic constitution that still holds today. Spain remains a dynamic, contentious democratic state.
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 security forces. From the conservative view, it was a indication of establishment wisdom. For Francoists, in the most distorted interpretation 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 recent book on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the proprietor kept insisting that his parent stated he had prospered under Franco. His father remembered, of course, only the prosperity of the 1960s.
The Danger of Ignorance
During the promotion of the local version of the publication, I have also discovered that the problems outlined by María Ramírez about growing up amid quiet about the dictatorship are still present. College attendees inform me that their secondary educators were still skirting around the subject recently. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a huge worry.
Ignorance is dangerous. It is understandable that nearly 20% 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 the Franco era was really about.
