Initially, not many suspected that Francisco Franco might become a strongman able to imposing a brutal dictatorship for 40 years. He was a short, squeaky-voiced army officer with a poor understanding of non-military matters and no charisma. However he did exactly that, prior to dying of natural causes in a hospital in Madrid, 50 years ago this week.
The Warning of Superficial Ordinariness
Nowadays, Franco stands as a warning that superficial averageness is no barrier to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a elusive, clever operator. His drive was underpinned by an iron will, a glib indifference to brutality and limitless self-confidence.
His admirers and defenders – including some on the newly buoyant extreme right in the Spanish nation, the United States and the United Kingdom – still claim Franco was never really a dictator, but rather a beloved rescuer from Marxism. This is incorrect, but autocrats do not arise from thin air.
"Some important part of every society consists of people who desire tyranny," political thinker from France Jean-François Revel observed the year after Franco's demise: "to wield it personally or – far more puzzlingly – to submit to it." He thought the same: the true desire of people was to see and feel themselves governed.
The Truth 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 subsequent civil conflict. He would not have executed 20,000 people afterwards.
Franco grabbed power in a Spain still slumped in post-imperial ennui – a mighty empire having disappeared the century before. Franco wanted to make Spain great again. He accused outsiders. They were stealing Spain’s money, plotting against the country as part of a Marxist-Jewish-masonic plot, or corrupting local thoughts with foreign ideas: liberal democracy, leftist ideas, communism, and his bizarre bugbear, secret societies.
A Calculated, Brutal Conflict
His war was deliberately slow and violent behind the lines, accompanied by a ruthless elimination of dissenters in an attempt to "purify" this tainted Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of supposedly "virile" men and obedient women, whose bodily autonomy, children, work and property were reduced, postponed, 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. International investment and products were shunned. "We have everything we need," he said.
Starvation and Isolation
However, this was incorrect. The immediate result 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 Nazi officials in Spain, his allies, protested that a impressive exterior hid the horrific reality. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco made Spain a pariah state, but he declined to relinquish power later. Spaniards descended deeper into suffering.
Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation
Franco's conviction that he was both divinely chosen and always right meant he insisted on a lifelong term in charge. A UK diplomat remarked that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", unaware of his own incompetence. Fortune, and a absence of clear doctrine, saved him. When the cold war started, he polished his anti-communist credentials and the United States restored his reputation.
As a result, a failing economic system was eventually rescued and compelled to liberalize by the US and the International Monetary Fund. During the sixties, Spain was drawn into a southern European economic boom that had started long before in neighboring countries. Abruptly, visitors were pouring on to Spanish beaches at coastal resorts or on the Costa del Sol. Numerous citizens still could not find work, but the money they sent home after emigrating to northern Europe also provided relief.
Authoritarian Control and Forgotten History
He gradually abandoned his most foolish concepts – from establishing a new realm to making synthetic gasoline with a "miraculous" formula – but never abandoned his central aim of making Spaniards tame, compliant and politically apathetic. He invested massively in state terror from the 1936 coup onwards, implemented a strict, propaganda-based press law, and ensured that multiple cohorts were educated in a heavily conservative and historically amnesiac state-approved syllabus. Even into the seventies, autonomous political groups, free and fair elections and labor organizations remained banned.
He also treated as children Spaniards, deeming them incapable of governing themselves. The most frightening aspect of his legacy was that so many accepted this.
Return to Violence and Medieval Execution
Once that fear-based agreement finally began to fall apart during the final years of his rule, he defaulted back to forceful control. Aggressive law enforcement, torture, execution teams and even that ancient killing method, the garrote, returned. The latter 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 employed by a western European government on its own citizens, in 1974.
Anxiety and Democratic Change
Nevertheless, the scholar Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco chronicler, recalls experiencing sorrow as a child, upon learning that Franco had passed away: "The grief of that youngster was shared 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 difficult to govern," he wrote. "That is what they said at educational institutions, in the press, on the TV … "
The predominant sensation in response to Franco's death was fear. Ultimately, what occurs after the figure at the centre of a long-standing autocracy dies? Authority was transferred to the monarch Juan Carlos, who oversaw three years of reforms that culminated in a referendum on the founding document that remains in effect. The country continues as a vibrant, contentious democracy.
Heroic Narratives and Twisted Legacies
Heroic narratives emerged to explain this. From the leftist perspective, it was the result of activism from brave street protesters, youth and laborers who clashed repeatedly with security forces. For the right, it was a sign of establishment wisdom. 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 produced drafts of my recent book on the dictator, El Generalisimo, the owner kept insisting that his father stated he had lived well under Franco. His parent recalled, of course, only the prosperity of the 1960s.
The Danger of Ignorance
While promoting the Spanish edition of the publication, I have also realised that the problems described by María Ramírez about growing up amid quiet about the dictatorship are still present. College attendees inform me that their high school teachers were still skirting around the subject recently. As a parent of Spanish youth, that is a huge worry.
Lack of knowledge is dangerous. It is not surprising that almost one in five young people believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The only way to change that is to break the silence and teach young Spaniards what the Franco era was really about.
