🔗 Share this article

On the surface, few expected that Francisco Franco could become a authoritarian ruler able to imposing a ruthless regime over four decades. He was a small-statured, squeaky-voiced army officer with a poor understanding of non-military matters and little personal appeal. However he achieved just that, before dying of natural causes in a Madrid hospital, half a century ago this week.

The Cautionary Tale of Superficial Ordinariness

Nowadays, Franco stands as a warning that outward mediocrity is no barrier to the ruthlessly ambitious. Behind the dull facade lay a slippery, shrewd operator. His drive was fueled by an iron will, a glib indifference to violence and limitless self-esteem.

Those who praise and defend him – including some on the newly buoyant far right in Spain, the US and the United Kingdom – still claim Franco was not truly a dictator, but rather a beloved rescuer from Marxism. They are wrong, but autocrats do not arise from thin air.

"A significant portion of every society is made up of people who desire authoritarian rule," French political theorist Jean-François Revel observed the year after Franco's demise: "either to exercise it themselves or – much more mysteriously – to submit to it." Franco believed the same: what people really wanted was to experience being ruled.

The Truth of Brutality and Suppression

Of course, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no need for his 1936 military insurrection against an democratically chosen progressive administration, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the ensuing Spanish civil war. Nor would he have shot 20,000 people afterwards.

He seized control in a Spain mired in post-imperial ennui – a mighty empire having disappeared the century before. He aimed to make Spain great again. He accused outsiders. They were plundering the nation's wealth, plotting against the country as part of a conspiracy theory, or corrupting local thoughts with external ideologies: 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, alongside a ruthless elimination of dissenters in an attempt to "cleanse" this contaminated Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of supposedly "masculine" men and obedient women, whose bodily autonomy, offspring, employment and possessions were reduced, shelved, or transferred to male relatives.

Following a punitive win, Franco confined the nation into a straitjacket of autarky and threw away the key. Autarky was adopted. International investment and products were avoided. "We possess all necessities," he said.

Famine and Pariah Status

However, this was incorrect. The direct outcome was starvation, with people perishing in urban areas in 1940 and 1945. As he drove on a victory tour through the towns of Jaén and Málaga, people pleaded at his car window. "Please, Mr. Franco, some bread," they said. Even Nazi officials in Spain, his allies, protested that a grandiose facade hid the horrific reality. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco made Spain a pariah state, but he refused to step aside later. The Spanish people descended deeper into misery.

Overconfidence and Political Revival

His belief that he was both divinely chosen and infallible meant he insisted on a lifelong term in charge. A UK diplomat complained that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", unaware of his own incompetence. Luck, and a absence of clear doctrine, saved him. As the Cold War began, he burnished his opposition to communism and the US restored his reputation.

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 neighboring countries. Abruptly, tourists were flocking 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.

State Terror and Historical Amnesia

Franco quietly dropped his most stupid ideas – from founding a new empire to producing artificial fuel with a "miraculous" formula – but never abandoned his central aim of making Spaniards tame, compliant and disengaged. He invested massively in state terror from the 1936 takeover forward, deployed a rigid, propaganda-based press law, and made sure multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing state-approved syllabus. Even into the seventies, autonomous political groups, democratic voting and labor organizations remained prohibited.

Franco also infantilised Spaniards, deeming them incapable of self-rule. The most frightening aspect of his heritage 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 rule, he reverted to violent domination. Trigger-happy police, abuse, firing squads and even that ancient killing method, the strangulation device, reappeared. The latter saw a metal collar placed around a convict's throat and tightened until it snapped their spine or cut off their air supply; it was being used by a European administration on its population, in 1974.

Anxiety and Democratic Change

Nevertheless, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco biographer, recalls feeling sad as a boy, upon hearing the news that Franco had passed away: "The sadness of that youngster was shared at the time by millions of Spaniards, 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 press, on the television … "

The predominant sensation in response to Franco's demise was fear. Ultimately, what occurs after the man at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship passes away? Authority was transferred to the monarch Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that culminated in a referendum on the founding document that still holds today. The country continues as a vibrant, contentious democratic state.

Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage

Heroic narratives arose to account for this. From the leftist perspective, it was the outcome of pressure from brave street protesters, youth and workers who fought continually with security forces. From the conservative view, it was a sign of establishment wisdom. For his supporters, in the most twisted version of all, it constitutes a part of the autocrat's heritage.

And therein lies a issue. In a Madrid printing store where I produced versions of my recent book on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the proprietor kept insisting that his father stated he had prospered 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 discovered that the issues outlined by María Ramírez about childhood surrounded by silence about the dictatorship are still with us. University students tell me that their secondary educators were still avoiding the subject just a year or two ago. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a major concern.

Ignorance is dangerous. It is not surprising that nearly 20% youth believe his dictatorship was good for Spain. The only way to alter this is to break the silence and educate young Spaniards what the Franco era was really about.