Initially, hardly anyone believed that Francisco Franco would become a authoritarian ruler able to enforcing a brutal dictatorship for four decades. He appeared as a short, high-pitched military man with a poor understanding of non-military matters and no charisma. But he did exactly that, before succumbing to natural causes in a hospital in Madrid, 50 years ago this week.
The Cautionary Tale of Outward Mediocrity
Even today, Franco stands as a warning that outward mediocrity is not an obstacle to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a elusive, shrewd operator. Franco's ambition was supported by an iron will, a glib indifference to violence and unbounded self-esteem.
His admirers and defenders – among them on the newly buoyant far right in the Spanish nation, the United States and the UK – continue to assert Franco was not truly a autocrat, but rather a beloved rescuer from communism. This is incorrect, but dictators do not emerge from nowhere.
"Some important part of any society is made up of people who desire authoritarian rule," political thinker from France Jean-François Revel observed the following year Franco's death: "either to exercise it themselves or – far more puzzlingly – to submit to it." Franco believed the same: what people really wanted was to see and feel themselves governed.
The Reality of Brutality and Suppression
Of course, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no need for his 1936 coup against an democratically chosen progressive administration, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the ensuing Spanish civil war. He would not have shot 20,000 people afterwards.
Franco grabbed power in a Spain still slumped in post-empire lethargy – a powerful realm having vanished the century before. Franco wanted to make Spain great again. He blamed foreigners. They were stealing Spain’s money, plotting against the country as part of a conspiracy theory, or poisoning Spanish minds with foreign ideas: democratic systems, socialism, Marxist doctrine, and his bizarre bugbear, secret societies.
A Deliberately Slow and Violent War
The conflict was deliberately slow and brutal in occupied areas, accompanied by a bloody purging of dissenters in an attempt to "cleanse" this contaminated Spain. The reimagined nation also had to be a place of supposedly "virile" men and obedient women, whose bodily autonomy, children, employment and possessions were reduced, shelved, 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 embraced. International investment and products were avoided. "We have everything we need," he said.
Starvation and Isolation
However, this was incorrect. The direct outcome was famine, with people dying on city streets in the early and mid-1940s. As he drove 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 supporters, complained that a impressive exterior hid the horrific reality. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the second world war, Franco made Spain a outcast nation, but he refused to step aside afterwards. Spaniards descended deeper into misery.
Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation
His belief that he was both selected by God and infallible meant he insisted on a permanent rule in charge. A UK diplomat remarked that he lived in a "thick fog of self-satisfaction", unaware of his own incompetence. Fortune, and a absence of clear doctrine, saved him. As the Cold War began, he polished his anti-communist credentials and the US restored his reputation.
Consequently, a disastrous economy was ultimately saved and compelled to liberalize by the United States and the IMF. In the 1960s, Spain was swept into a southern European economic boom that had started long before in Italy and Portugal. 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 remittances after moving abroad also provided relief.
Authoritarian Control and Forgotten History
Franco quietly dropped his most stupid ideas – from founding a new empire to making synthetic gasoline with a "magic" formula – but never abandoned his central aim of making Spaniards tame, obedient and disengaged. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 takeover onwards, implemented a strict, propaganda-based media regulation, and ensured that multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing state-approved syllabus. Even into the seventies, independent political parties, free and fair elections and labor organizations remained prohibited.
He also treated as children Spaniards, deeming them incapable of governing themselves. 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 last decade of his rule, he reverted to violent domination. Aggressive law enforcement, torture, 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 tightened until it broke their neck or cut off their air supply; it was being used by a European administration on its population, during the seventies.
Anxiety and Democratic Change
Nevertheless, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco biographer, recalls experiencing sorrow as a boy, upon learning that Franco had died: "The grief of that youngster was felt at the time by millions of Spaniards, who thought that the man who had just died had been the optimal answer for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "That is what they said at educational institutions, in the press, on the television … "
The main feeling in reaction to Franco's death was fear. After all, what happens after the figure at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship dies? Power was initially passed to the monarch Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that culminated in a referendum on the founding document that still holds today. Spain remains a dynamic, contentious democracy.
Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage
Heroic narratives emerged to account for this. For the left, 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 indication of institutional prudence. For Francoists, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it constitutes a part of the autocrat's heritage.
And therein lies a issue. In a Madrid printing store where I printed out drafts of my latest publication on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the owner kept maintaining that his father claimed to have prospered under Franco. His father remembered, naturally, only the prosperity of the sixties.
The Danger of Ignorance
During the promotion of the Spanish edition of the publication, I have also discovered that the problems outlined by María Ramírez about growing up amid quiet about the dictatorship are still with us. University students tell me that their high school teachers were still avoiding the topic just a year or two ago. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a huge worry.
Ignorance is risky. It is understandable that almost one in five young people believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The sole method to change that is to end the quiet and teach the new generation what the Franco era was truly like.
