Initially, few suspected that Francisco Franco would become a authoritarian ruler capable of imposing a ruthless regime over 40 years. He appeared as a short, high-pitched military man with a shaky grasp of civilian affairs and little personal appeal. Yet he accomplished precisely that, prior to succumbing to natural causes in a Madrid hospital, 50 years ago this week.
The Cautionary Tale of Superficial Ordinariness
To this day, Franco stands as a warning that superficial averageness is no barrier to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a elusive, clever operator. Franco's ambition was supported by an unyielding determination, a casual disregard to brutality and unbounded self-confidence.
Those who praise and defend him – including some on the newly buoyant extreme right in the Spanish nation, the US and the UK – still claim Franco was never really a autocrat, but instead a beloved rescuer from communism. This is incorrect, but autocrats do not emerge from nowhere.
"A significant portion of every society is made up of people who actively want authoritarian rule," French political theorist Jean-François Revel observed the following year Franco's death: "either to exercise it themselves or – far more puzzlingly – 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 500,000 fatalities of the ensuing Spanish civil war. He would not have executed 20,000 people later.
Franco grabbed power in a Spain still slumped in post-imperial ennui – a powerful realm having vanished the previous century. Franco wanted to restore Spain's greatness. He accused outsiders. They were either plundering the nation's wealth, plotting against the country as part of a conspiracy theory, or corrupting local thoughts with foreign ideas: democratic systems, socialism, Marxist doctrine, and his bizarre bugbear, secret societies.
A Deliberately Slow and Violent War
The conflict was intentionally prolonged and brutal in occupied areas, accompanied by a ruthless elimination of opponents in an attempt to "cleanse" this tainted Spain. The reimagined nation also had to be a place of allegedly "virile" men and obedient women, whose rights to their bodies, offspring, employment and property were reduced, postponed, or handed over to male relatives.
After a vengeful victory, Franco locked Spain into a corset of self-reliance and threw away the key. Economic self-sufficiency was adopted. 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. As he drove on a triumphal journey through the towns of Jaén and Málaga, people begged at his car window. "Señor Franco, for God’s sake, a piece of bread," they said. Even German representatives in Spain, his supporters, protested that a impressive exterior hid the horrific reality. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the second world war, Franco turned Spain into 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 infallible meant he insisted on a lifelong term in charge. A British ambassador complained that he lived in a "thick fog of self-satisfaction", blind to his own incompetence. Fortune, and a absence of clear doctrine, came to Franco’s rescue. As the Cold War began, he polished his anti-communist credentials and the US rehabilitated him.
Consequently, a failing economic system was ultimately saved and compelled to liberalize by the United States and the International Monetary Fund. During the sixties, Spain was drawn into a southern European economic boom that had started long before in Italy and Portugal. Abruptly, tourists were flocking to Spanish beaches at Benidorm or on the Costa del Sol. 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
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 docile, compliant and disengaged. He devoted extensive resources in government intimidation from the 1936 coup forward, implemented a rigid, propaganda-based press law, and made sure multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and historically amnesiac Francoist curriculum. Even into the seventies, independent political parties, democratic voting and labor organizations remained prohibited.
Franco also infantilised Spaniards, considering them unable of self-rule. The most frightening aspect 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 rule, he reverted to forceful control. Aggressive law enforcement, abuse, firing squads and even that ancient killing method, the garrote, returned. This method saw a iron band fastened around a condemned person’s neck and tightened until it snapped their spine or stopped their breathing; it was employed by a western European government on its own citizens, during the seventies.
Fear and the Transition to Democracy
Nevertheless, the scholar Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco chronicler, recalls experiencing sorrow as a boy, upon learning that Franco had passed away: "The grief of that youngster was felt at the time by millions of Spaniards, who believed that the man who had just died had been the best possible solution for a country that was difficult to govern," 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 anxiety. Ultimately, what occurs after the figure at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship passes away? Authority was transferred to the monarch Juan Carlos, who supervised three years of reforms that ended with a public vote on the democratic constitution that still holds today. Spain remains a dynamic, disputatious democracy.
Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage
Heroic narratives emerged to account for this. For the left, it was the outcome of pressure from courageous demonstrators, youth and workers who clashed repeatedly with security forces. For the right, it was a indication of institutional prudence. For Francoists, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it forms part of the autocrat's heritage.
And therein lies a issue. At the Madrid copy shop where I printed out versions of my latest publication on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the proprietor kept insisting that his father claimed to have prospered under Franco. His father remembered, of course, only the prosperity of the 1960s.
The Peril of Unawareness
While promoting the local version of the publication, I have also realised that the problems outlined by María Ramírez about growing up amid quiet about the regime are still with us. College attendees tell me that their secondary educators were still avoiding the topic 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 think his regime was beneficial for Spain. The sole method to change that is to break the silence and educate the new generation what Francoism was really about.
