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'General Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde' (
4 December 1892 -
November 20,
[1] 1975), commonly abbreviated to 'Francisco Franco' (
pron. IPA: ) or 'Francisco Franco Bahamonde', and also known as ''
Caudillo'' or ''
Generalísimo'', was a
dictator that headed and later formally became
head of state of
Spain from October 1936, and of all of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
Franco led a successful military career and reached the rank of General. He fought in
Morocco and suppressed a
strike in 1934. In February, 1936, the left-wing
Popular Front won the general election and formed a government. A period of severe instability and disarray followed the election, with escalating violence between left and right wing supporters.
Anti-clerical violence against the Church by left wing militants further raised tensions. After the assassination of a major opposition figure,
José Calvo Sotelo by a commando unit of the Assault Guards in July 1936, Franco participated in a ''coup d'etat'' against the legitimately elected Popular Front government. The coup failed and evolved into the
Spanish Civil War during which he emerged as the leader of the Nationalists against the elected government.
After winning the civil war, he dissolved the Spanish Parliament, establishing an authoritarian regime that lasted until
1978, when a new constitution was drafted. During the Second World War, Franco maintained a policy of neutrality, although he did assist Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on a small scale, most famously by sending troops (known as the
Blue Division) to aid Nazi Germany in the occupation of
Russia. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union by the German Army, Franco and
Hitler met in
Hendaye the 23rd of October
1940. In addition, during the
Cold War, the
United States established a diplomatic alliance with Franco, due to his strong anti-communist policy. American President
Richard Nixon toasted Franco
[1], and, after Franco's death, stated: "General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of the United States
[2]."
Many view Franco as a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. Franco's state combined
corporatism, nationalism, and a focus on traditional values. From 1947 and until his death he was de facto
regent of Spain, which he ruled as a dictator, repressing dissident opinions through institutionalised torture, concentration camps (such as Los Merinales in
Seville, San Marcos in
León, Castuera
[2] in Extremadura, and the Camp of
Miranda de Ebro), heavy prison sentences, and the application of the death penalty against criminals and political opponents. After his death Spain began a transition to democracy. Pre-constitutional symbols from the Franco regime (such as the national flag with the Imperial Eagle) are banned by law.
Franco's legacy is still controversial. While many Spaniards remember him as a strong leader who pacified and stabilized Spain, others remember him as a harsh dictator. Issues surrounding his controversial legacy include whether the
Second Spanish Republic he overthrew had become an unstable and extremist regime, the extent of violent
anti-clericalism among his opponents, the nature of the relationship between his politics and those of contemporaries
Hitler and
Mussolini, and the execution of thousands of military and political opponents during the
civil war and in the early years after.
Early life
Franco was born in
Ferrol (
Galicia),
Spain (between 1938 and 1982 his hometown would be known officially as ''El Ferrol del Caudillo'').
[3] His father, Nicolás Franco y Salgado-Araújo, was a
Navy paymaster. His mother, María del Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade, also came from a family with a tradition of service in the navy. His siblings included
Nicolás, navy officer and diplomat; and
Ramón, a pioneering aviator who was hated by many of Francisco Franco's supporters. Their mother, through the 7th Conde de Lemos and his wife the 3rd Condessa de Villalva, was twice a descendant, from a sister of
King Manuel I, and thus from other Portuguese Kings
[4] [5].
Francisco was to follow his father into the navy, but entry into the Naval Academy was closed from 1906 to 1913. To his father's chagrin, he decided to join the army. In 1907, he entered the Infantry Academy in
Toledo, from which he graduated in 1910. He was commissioned as a lieutenant. Two years later, he obtained a commission to
Morocco. Spanish efforts to physically occupy their new
African
protectorate provoked the protracted
Rif War (from 1909 to 1927) with native Moroccans. Tactics at the time resulted in heavy losses among Spanish
military officers, but also gave the chance of earning promotion through merit. It was said that officers would get either ''la caja o la faja'' (a coffin or a general's sash).
Franco soon gained a reputation as a good officer. He joined the newly formed
regulares,
colonial native troops with Spanish officers, who acted as
shock troops.
In 1916, at the age of 23 and already a captain, he was badly wounded in a skirmish at ''El Biutz''. His survival marked him permanently in the eyes of the native troops as a man of ''
baraka'' (good luck). He was also recommended unsuccessfully for Spain's highest honor for gallantry, the coveted ''Cruz Laureada de San Fernando''. Instead, he was promoted to
major (comandante), becoming the youngest
field grade officer in the Spanish Army.
From 1917 to 1920, he was posted on the Spanish mainland. That last year, Lieutenant Colonel
José Millán Astray, a histrionic but charismatic officer, founded the
''Legión Extranjera'', along similar lines to the
French Foreign Legion. Franco became the Legion's second-in-command and returned to Africa.
On
July 24 1921, the poorly commanded and overextended Spanish Army suffered
a crushing defeat at
Annual at the hands of the
Rif tribes led by the
Abd el-Krim brothers. The Legion symbolically, if not materially, saved the Spanish enclave of
Melilla after a gruelling three-day forced march led by Franco. In 1923, already a
lieutenant colonel, he was made commander of the Legion.
The same year, he married María del
Carmen Polo y Martínez Valdés; they had one child, a daughter,
María del Carmen, born in 1926.
[6] As a special mark of honor, his
best man (''padrino'') at the wedding was King
Alfonso XIII, a fact that would mark him during the
Republic as a monarchical officer.
Promoted to
colonel, Franco led the first wave of troops ashore at
Alhucemas in 1925. This landing in the heartland of Abd el-Krim's tribe, combined with the French invasion from the south, spelled the beginning of the end for the shortlived
Republic of the Rif.
Becoming the youngest
general in Spain in 1926, Franco was appointed in 1928 director of the newly created
Joint Military Academy in
Zaragoza, a new college for all Army
cadets, replacing the former separate institutions for young men seeking to become officers in infantry, cavalry, artillery, and other branches of the army.
During the Second Spanish Republic
With the fall of the monarchy in 1931, in keeping with his long-standing apolitical record he did not take any notable stand. But the closing of the Academy, in June, by War Minister
Manuel Azaña, provoked his first clash with the Republic. Azaña found Franco's farewell speech to the cadets
[7] insulting. For six months, Franco was without a post and under surveillance.
On
February 5 1932, he was given a command in
La Coruña. Franco avoided being involved in
José Sanjurjo's attempted ''coup'' that year, and even wrote a hostile letter to Sanjurjo expressing his anger over the attempt. As a side result of Azaña's military reform, in January 1933, Franco was relegated from the first to the 24th in the list of Brigadiers; conversely, the same year (
February 17), he was given the military command of the
Balearic Islands: a post above his rank.
The Asturias uprisings
New elections held in October 1933 resulted in a center-right majority. In opposition to this government, a
revolutionary movement broke out
October 5 1934. This uprising was rapidly quelled in most of the country, but gained a stronghold in
Asturias, with the support of the
miners' unions. Franco, already general of a Division and assessor to the war minister, Diego Hidalgo, was put in command of the operations directed to suppress the insurgency. The forces of the Army in Africa were to carry the brunt of this, with General
Eduardo López Ochoa as commander in the field. After two weeks of heavy fighting (and a death toll estimated between 1,200 and 2,000), the rebellion was suppressed.
The uprising and, in general, the events that led over the next two years to the civil war, are still heavily debated (between, for example,
Enrique Moradiellos and
Pio Moa.
[8][9][10]) Nonetheless, it is universally agreed that the insurgency in Asturias sharpened the antagonism between Left and Right. Franco and López Ochoa—who, prior to the campaign in Asturias, was seen as a left-leaning officer—were marked by the left as enemies. At the start of the Civil War, López Ochoa was persecuted, decapitated, his head stuck on a broomstick and paraded in the streets. [Jorge Reverte]
By mobilising against these revolts, Franco had acted in defence of the Republic and stabilising the democratic institutions.
Some time after these events, Franco was briefly commander-in-chief of the Army of Africa (from
February 15 onwards), and from
May 19 1935 on,
Chief of the General Staff, the top military post in Spain.
1936 General Election
After the ruling centre-right coalition collapsed amid the
Straperlo corruption scandal, new elections were scheduled. Two wide coalitions formed: the
Popular Front on the left, ranging from
Republican Union Party to
Communists, and the
Frente Nacional on the right, ranging from the center
radicals to the conservative
Carlists. On
February 16 1936, the left won by a narrow margin.
[11] Growing political bitterness surfaced again. The government and its supporters, the Popular Front, whose leadership was clearly moving more and more towards the Extreme Left, had launched a violent campaign against the Opposition whom they accused of plotting against the Republic. The Opposition parties, on the other hand, had reacted with increasing vigour. The latter claimed that the Popular Front had not obtained legally more than just over two hundred seats in a Parliament of 473 members, that the government represented therefore only a minority, and added that the Popular Front's parliamentary majority was the result of large-scale electoral fraud, of Government-sponsored mob terror and intimidation, of the arbitrary annulment of all election certificates in many Right-wing constituencies, and of the expulsion, the arrest, or even the assassination, of many legally elected deputies of the Right. According to the Opposition, the real enemies of the Republic were not on the Right but on the Left; Spain was in imminent danger of falling under a Communist dictatorship, and therefore by fighting the Popular Front they, the Opposition, were merely doing their duty in defence of law and order and of the freedom and the fundamental rights of the Spanish people.
[12]
The days after the election were marked by near-chaotic circumstances. Franco lobbied unsuccessfully to have a state of emergency declared, with the stated purpose of quelling the disturbances and allowing an orderly vote recount.
Instead, on
February 23, Franco was sent away to be military commander of the
Canary Islands, a distant place with few troops under his command.
Meanwhile, a conspiracy led by
Emilio Mola was taking shape. Franco was contacted, but maintained an ambiguous attitude almost up until July. On
June 23 1936, he even wrote to the head of the government,
Casares Quiroga, offering to quell the discontent in the army, but was not answered. The other rebels were determined to go ahead, ''con Paquito o sin Paquito'' (with Franco or without him), as it was put by
José Sanjurjo, the honorary leader of the military uprising. After various postponements,
July 18 was fixed as the date of the uprising. The situation reached a point of no return and, as presented to Franco by Mola, the coup was unavoidable and he had to choose a side. He decided to join the rebels and was given the task of commanding the
Army of Africa. A privately owned DH 89
De Havilland Dragon Rapide, (still referred to in Spain as ''the'' Dragon Rapide), was chartered in
England July 11 to take him to
Africa.
The assassination of the right-wing opposition leader
José Calvo Sotelo by government police troops (quite possibly acting on their own, as in the case of
José Castillo) precipitated the uprising. On
July 17, one day earlier than planned, the African Army rebelled, detaining their commanders. On
July 18, Franco published a manifesto
[13] and left for Africa, where he arrived the next day to take command.
A week later, the rebels, who soon called themselves the ''
Nationalists'', controlled only a third of Spain, and most
navy units remained under control of the opposition Republican (or Spanish loyalist) forces, which left Franco isolated. The coup had failed, but the
Spanish Civil War had begun.
The Spanish Civil War
The first months
Despite Franco having no money, while the state treasury was in Madrid with the government, there was an organized economic lobby in London looking after his financial needs with
Lisbon as their operational base. Franco once said, "I got all my inspiration from the great Robert E. Lee. If I could grow a beard, I would." Eventually, he was to receive enormous help from his economic and diplomatic boosters abroad. The first days of the rebellion were marked with a serious need to secure control over the Spanish Moroccan
Protectorate. On one side, Franco managed to win the support of the natives and their (nominal) authorities, and, on the other, to ensure his control over the army. This led to the summary execution of some 200 senior officers loyal to the Republic (one of them his own first cousin).
[14] Franco had to face the problem of how to move his troops to the
Iberian Peninsula, because most units of the Navy had remained in control of the Republic and were blocking the
Strait of Gibraltar. He requested help from
Mussolini, who responded with an unconditional offer of arms and planes;
Wilhelm Canaris in Germany persuaded
Hitler, as well, to support the Nationalists. From
July 20 onward he was able, with a small group of 22 mainly German
Junkers Ju 52 airplanes, to initiate an air bridge to
Seville, where his troops helped to ensure the rebel control of the city. Through representatives, he started to negotiate with the
United Kingdom,
Germany and
Italy for more military support, and above all for more airplanes. Negotiations were successful with the last two on
July 25, and airplanes began to arrive in
Tetouan on
August 2. On
August 5, Franco was able to break the blockade with the newly arrived air support, successfully deploying a ship convoy with some 2,000 soldiers.
In early August, the situation in western
Andalusia was stable enough to allow him to organize a column (some 15,000 men at its height), under the command of then Lieutenant-Colonel
Juan Yagüe, which would march through
Extremadura towards
Madrid. On
August 11,
Mérida was taken, and on
August 15 Badajoz, thus joining both nationalist-controlled areas. Additionally, Mussolini ordered a voluntary army (CTV) of some 12,000 Italians of fully motorised units to Seville and Hitler added to them a professional squadron from the
Luftwaffe (2JG/88) with about 24 planes. All these planes had the Nationalist Spanish insignia painted on them, but were flown by Italian and German troops. The backbone of Franco's aviation in those days were the Italian
SM.79 and
SM.81 bombers, the biplane Fiat
CR.32 fighter and the German
Junkers Ju 52 cargo-bomber and the
Heinkel He 51 biplane fighter.
On
September 21, with the head of the column at the town of
Maqueda (some 80 km away from Madrid), Franco ordered a detour to free the besieged garrison at the
Alcázar of
Toledo, which was achieved
September 27. This controversial decision gave the Popular Front time to strengthen its defences in Madrid and hold the city that year, but was an important morale and propaganda success.
Rise to power
The designated leader of the uprising, Gen.
José Sanjurjo had died on
July 20 in an air crash. In the nationalist zone, "Political life ceased."
[15] Initially, only militarily command mattered; this was divided into regional commands: (
Emilio Mola in the North,
Gonzalo Queipo de Llano in
Seville commanding
Andalusia, Franco with an independent command and
Miguel Cabanellas in
Zaragoza commanding
Aragon). From
July 24, a coordinating ''
junta'' was established, based at
Burgos. Nominally led by Cabanellas, as the most senior general,
[16] it initially included Mola, three other generals, and two colonels; Franco was added in early August.
[17] On
September 21, it was decided that Franco was to be commander-in-chief (this unified command was opposed only by Cabanellas),
[18] and
September 28, and after some discussion, with no more than a lukewarm agreement from Queipo de Llano and from Mola, also head of government.
[19] He was doubtless helped to this primacy by the fact that, in late July, Hitler had decided that all of Germany's aid to the nationalists would go to Franco.
[20]
Mola considered Franco as unfit and not part of the initial revolutionary group. But Mola himself had been somewhat discredited as the main planner of the attempted coup that had now degenerated into a civil war, and was strongly identified with the
Carlists and not at all with the
Falange, nor did he have good relations with Germans; Queipo de Llano and Cabanellas had both previously rebelled against the dictatorship of
Miguel Primo de Rivera and were therefore discredited in some nationalist circles; and Falangist leader
José Antonio Primo de Rivera was in prison in Madrid (a few months later, he would be executed) and the desire to keep a place open for him prevented any other falangist leader from emerging as a possible head of state. Franco's previous aloofness from politics meant that he had few active enemies in any of the factions that needed to be placated, and had cooperated in recent months with both Germany and Italy.
[21]
On
October 1 1936, in Burgos, Franco was publicly proclaimed as ''Generalísimo'' of the National army and ''Jefe del Estado'' (
Head of State).
[22] Mola was furious and
Cabanellas intervened to calm the spirits down. When Mola was killed in another air accident a year later (
June 2 1937), no military leader was left from those who organized the conspiracy against the Republic between 1933 and 1935.
[23] It is still disputed if Mola's death was a deliberate assassination by the Germans.
Military command
From that time until the end of the war, Franco personally guided military operations. After the
failed assault on Madrid in November 1936, Franco settled to a piecemeal approach to winning the war, rather than bold maneuvering. As with his decision to
relieve the garrison at Toledo, this approach has been subject of some debate; some of his decisions, such as, in June 1938, when he preferred to head for
Valencia instead of
Catalonia, remain particularly controversial.
Unable to receive support from any other nation, his army was supported by
Nazi Germany in the form of the
Condor Legion. These German forces also provided maintenance personnel and trainers, and some 22,000 Germans and 91,000 Italians served over the entire war period in Spain. Principal assistance was received from
Fascist Italy (''
Corpo Truppe Volontarie''), but the degree of influence of both powers on Franco's direction of the war seems to have been very limited. Nevertheless, the Italian troops, despite
not being always effective, were present in most of the large operations in big numbers, while the CTV helped the Nationalist airforce dominate the skies for most of the war.
António de Oliveira Salazar's
Portugal also openly assisted the Nationalists from the start, contributing some 20,000 troops.
It is said that Franco's direction of the Nazi and Fascist forces was limited, particularly in the direction of the
Condor Legion, however, he was officially, by default, their supreme commander and they rarely made decisions on their own. For reasons of prestige, it was decided to continue assisting Franco till the end of the war, and Italian and German troops paraded on the day of the final victory in Madrid.
[24]
Political command
He managed to fuse the
ideologically incompatible national-syndicalist
Falange ("phalanx", a
far-right Spanish
political party) and the
Carlist monarchist parties under his rule. This new political formation appeased the more extreme and Germanophile Falangists while tempering them with the anti-German, pro-Spain Carlists. Franco's brother-in-law
Ramón Serrano Súñer, who was his main political advisor, was able to turn the various parties under Franco against each other to absorb a series of political confrontations against Franco himself. At a certain moment he even expelled the original leading members of both the Carlists (
Manuel Fal Conde) and the Falangists (
Manuel Hedilla) to secure Franco's political future.
From early 1937, every death sentence had to be signed (or acknowledged) by Franco. However, this does not mean that he had intimate or complete knowledge of every official execution. From the beginning of the revolt, all the Junta generals were more than keen in publicly executing many people in order to spread fear and reduce resistance. After Franco's victory the executions continued with another 20,000 estimated victims. Recent searches with parallel excavations of mass graves in Spain estimate that the total of people executed after the war may even arrive at a number between 15,000 to 27,000.
During World War II, Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris had regular meetings with Franco and informed Franco of Germany's attitude and plans for Spain. This information prompted Franco to surreptitiously reposition his best and most experienced troops to camps near the
Pyrenees and to reshape the terrain to be unfriendly to tanks and other military vehicles.
The end of the war
On
March 4 1939, an uprising broke out within the Republican camp, claiming to forestall an intended Communist coup by prime minister Juan Negrín. Led by Colonel
Segismundo Casado and
Julián Besteiro, the rebels gained control over
Madrid. They tried to negotiate a settlement with Franco, who refused anything but
unconditional surrender. They gave way; Madrid was occupied on
March 27, and the Republic fell. The war officially ended on
April 1,
1939. On this very date, Franco placed his sword upon the altar in a church and in a vow, promised that he would never again take up his sword unless Spain itself was threatened with invasion, a vow one might argue he kept.
However, during the 1940s and 1950s,
guerrilla resistance to Franco (known as "the ''
maquis''") was widespread in many mountainous regions. In 1944, a group of republican veterans, which also fought in the
French resistance against the
Nazis, invaded the
Val d'Aran in northwest
Catalonia, but they were easily defeated.
Spain under Franco
Main articles: Spain under Franco
Hitler and Franco
Spain was bitterly divided and economically ruined as a result of the civil war. Even with the war over, Franco's government sought to repress any dissent. The early years of Franco's administration were marked by harsh repression, with thousands of summary executions, an unknown number of political prisoners and tens of thousands of people in exile, largely in France and Latin America. The 1940 shooting of the president of the
Catalan government,
Lluís Companys, was one of the most notable cases of this early repression. While the major groups targeted were real and suspected
leftists, ranging from the leftist supporters to
Communists and
Anarchists, the Spanish
intelligentsia,
atheists and military and government figures who had remained loyal to the Madrid government during the war. The repression in Spain did not end with the cessation of hostilities; many political prisoners suffered execution by the firing squad, under the accusation of treason by martial courts.
Franco was officially known as "Su Excelencia el Jefe de Estado" ("His Excellency the Head of State"), but in state and official documents he was also referred to as "Caudillo de España" ("the Leader of Spain") and "el Generalísimo" ("the Most High General"). During his rule he was called "el Caudillo de la Última Cruzada y de la Hispanidad" ("the Leader of the Last Crusade and of the Hispanic World") and "el Caudillo de la Guerra de Liberación contra el Comunismo y sus Cómplices" ("the Leader of the War of Liberation Against Communism and Its Collaborators").
World War II
In September 1939,
World War II broke out in Europe, and although
Adolf Hitler met Franco once in
Hendaye, France (
October 23 1940), to discuss Spanish entry on the side of the
Axis, Franco's demands (food, military equipment,
Gibraltar,
French North Africa, Portugal, etc.) proved too much and no agreement was reached. (An oft-cited remark attributed to Hitler is that the German leader would rather have some teeth extracted than to have to deal further with Franco.) Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German mining rights in Spain. Some historians argue that Franco made demands that he knew Hitler would not accede to in order to stay out of the war. Other historians argue that he, as leader of a destroyed country in chaos, simply had nothing to offer the Germans and their military. Yet, after the collapse of France in June 1940, Spain did adopt a pro-Axis non-belligerency stance (for example, he offered Spanish naval facilities to German ships) until returning to complete neutrality in
1943 when the tide of the war had turned decisively against
Germany and its allies. Some volunteer Spanish troops (the ''
División Azul'', or "Blue Division")—not given official state sanction by Franco—went to fight on the
Eastern Front under German command from
1941-
1943. Some historians have argued that not all of the Blue Division were true volunteers and that Franco expended relatively small but significant resources to aid the Axis powers' battle against the
Soviet Union.
During the entire war, especially after
1942, the Spanish borders were more or less kept open for Jewish refugees from
Vichy France and Nazi-occupied territories in Europe. Franco's diplomats extended their diplomatic protection over Sephardic Jews in
Hungary,
Slovakia and the
Balkans. Spain was a safe haven for all Jewish refugees and
antisemitism was not official policy under the Franco regime.
On
June 14, 1940, the Spanish forces in Morocco occupied
Tangier (a city under the rule of the
League of Nations) and did not leave it until 1945.
According to author Richard Bassett, Franco's neutrality was bought dearly with a sum paid by Churchill into Swiss bank accounts for him and his generals
[25]. Franco thus waited quite a long time after WWII to pressure the United Kingdom regarding Spanish claims on Gibraltar.
After the war
With the end of World War II, Franco and Spain were forced to suffer the economic consequences of the isolation imposed on it by nations such as the United Kingdom and the United States. This situation ended in part when, due to Spain's strategic location in light of
Cold War tensions, the
United States entered into a trade and military alliance with Spain. This historic alliance commenced with
United States President Eisenhower's visit in 1953 which resulted in the
Pact of Madrid. This partly initiated the "
Spanish Miracle," which developed Spain from
corporatist autarky into semi-
capitalism. Spain was admitted to the
United Nations in 1955, though Franco himself rarely left Spain during his rule. During the 1960s, some sectors of Francoist Spain's population experienced a significant increase in personal wealth.
Lacking any strong ideology, Franco initially sought support from various right-wing groups. He initially allied very closely with the fascist elements of the
Falange, but Franco's administration became less ideological as time progressed. While fascists from the Falange de las JONS initially had a great deal of power in Franco's administration, they were marginalized in favor of ("
Opus Dei")
technocrats, especially after the defeat of fascist Italy and Germany during WWII.
In 1947, Franco proclaimed Spain a
monarchy, but did not designate a monarch. This gesture was largely done to appease monarchist factions within the ''Movimiento'' (
Carlists and
Alfonsists). Although a self-proclaimed monarchist himself, Franco had no particular desire for a King yet, and as such, he left the throne vacant, with himself as ''de facto''
regent. He wore the uniform of a
Captain General (a rank traditionally reserved for the King) and resided in the
El Pardo Palace (not to be confused with the
El Prado). In addition, he appropriated the royal privilege of walking beneath a
canopy, and his portrait appeared on most Spanish coins. Indeed, although his formal titles were ''Jefe del Estado'' (Chief of State), and ''Generalísimo de los Ejércitos Españoles'' (''Generalísimo'' of the Spanish Armed Forces), he had originally intended any government that succeeded him to be much more authoritarian than the previous monarchy. This is indicated in his use of "
by the grace of God" in his official title, a phrase often used by monarchs.
During his rule, non-government
trade unions and all political opponents across the
political spectrum, from
communist and
anarchist organizations to
liberal democrats and
Catalan or
Basque separatists, were either suppressed or tightly controlled by all means including violent police repression. The only legal trade union was the government-run
Sindicato Vertical, which was based on corporatist principles.
The legal usage of languages other than
Spanish (especially
Catalan,
Galician and
Basque languages) was forbidden.
Language politics in Francoist Spain stated that all government, notarial, legal and commercial documents were drawn up exclusively in Spanish and any written in other languages were deemed null and void. The usage of any other language was forbidden in schools and banned on advertising and road and shop signs. Citizens continued to speak these languages in private.
All cultural activities were subject to
censorship, and many were plainly forbidden (often in an erratic manner). This cultural policy relaxed with time, most notably in the early 1970s.
Civil marriages which had taken place under Republican Spain were declared null and void and had to be reconfirmed by the Catholic Church of Spain. The enforcement by public authorities of strict
Roman Catholic social
mores was a stated intent of the regime, mainly by using a law (the ''Ley de Vagos y Maleantes'', Vagrancy Act) enacted by
Azaña [3]. The remaining nomads of Spain (
Gitanos and
Mercheros like
El Lute) were especially affected. In 1954,
homosexuality,
pedophilia, and
prostitution were, through this law, made criminal offenses
[4], although its application was seldom consistent.
Most towns were patrolled by pairs of ''
Guardia Civil'', a military police for civilians, and functioned as his chief means of social control. Franco, like others at the time, evidenced a concern about a possible
Masonic conspiracy against his regime. Some non-Spanish authors have described it as being an "obsession".
Student revolts at universities in the late '60s and early '70s were violently repressed by the heavily-armed ''Policía Armada'' (Armed Police), also known as "los grises" because of their grey uniforms.
Franco continued to personally sign all death warrants until just months before he died, despite international campaigns requesting him to desist.
In popular imagination, he is often remembered as in the black and white images of ''
No-Do''
newsreels, inaugurating a
reservoir, hence his nickname ''Paco Ranas'' (Paco – a familiar form of Francisco – "frogs"), or catching huge fish from the Azor yacht during his holidays.
In 1968, due to United Nations' pressure, Franco granted Spain's
colony of
Equatorial Guinea its independence, and the next year, ceded the
exclave of
Ifni to
Morocco. Under Franco, Spain also pursued a campaign to gain sovereignty of the
British colony of
Gibraltar, and closed the border in 1969 , which was not fully reopened until 1985.
In 1969, he designated Prince
Juan Carlos de Borbón, with the new title of Prince of Spain, as his successor. This came as a surprise for the
Carlist pretender to the throne, as well as for Juan Carlos's father,
Don Juan, the Count of Barcelona, who technically had a superior right to the throne. By 1973, Franco had surrendered the function of
prime minister (''Presidente del Gobierno''), remaining only as head of state and commander in chief of the military. As his final years progressed, tension within the various factions of the Movimiento would consume Spanish political life, as varying groups jockeyed for position to control the country's future. In 1974 Franco fell ill, and Juan Carlos took over as Head of State. Franco soon recovered, but one year later fell ill once again, and after a long illness, Franco died on
November 20,
1975, at the age of 82—the same date as the death of
José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange. It is suspected that the doctors were ordered to keep him barely alive by artificial means until this symbolic date of the far-right. The historian Ricardo de la Cierva says that on the 19th around 6 p.m. he was told that Franco had already died.
After Franco's death, the interim government took decision to bury him at Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, a colossal memorial to all casualties during Spanish Civil War. The monument, conceived personally by Franco, had a distinctly nationalist tone. It was built by Republican prisoners of war under
forced labour.
Spain after Franco
Main articles: Spanish transition to democracy
Franco's intended successor, Admiral
Luis Carrero Blanco, was
killed in
1973 in a terrorist attack by the
Basque nationalist group
ETA.
Franco's successor as head of state was the current Spanish monarch,
Juan Carlos. Though much beloved by Franco, the King held liberal political views which earned him suspicion among conservatives who hoped he would continue Franco's policies. Instead, Juan Carlos proceeded to restore democracy in the nation, and helped crush an
attempted military coup in 1981.
Very recently (2005) a somewhat systematic search for mass graves of people executed during Franco's regime has been started by the present Socialist government in Spain (
PSOE). There have been talks about officially recognizing the crimes against civilians during the Francoist rule after the end of the Civil War. Some statues of Franco and other public Francoist symbols have been removed. Additionally, the EU has taken steps toward a European resolution on this topic, which may rewrite some historic views on Franco.
[26] In Germany a squadron named after
Werner Mölders has been renamed, because as a pilot he led the escorting units in the
bombing of Guernica. As recently as 2006, the BBC reported that an MEP from Poland had expressed admiration for Franco's stature as a saviour of the free world.
[5].
Legacy
Franco's legacy is still controversial. Some Spaniards remember him as a strong leader who pacified an unstable and violent country. Many others remember him as a harsh and even
sadistic dictator. Various major issues surround his mixed and controversial legacy.
Nature of government overthrown by Franco
Extremism
A major issue is whether the Popular Front government he overthrew after the murder of José Calvo Sotelo ''"the Spanish Matteoti"'' had become a repressive extreme-left regime. Government supporters were carrying out many violent attacks on opposition supporters (as were opposition supporters on government supporters) and the government was either unwilling or unable to control this violence. Government forces, particularly the
Assault Guards, the militarised urban police force, were involved in the violence. Franco and his supporters felt that the Republican government did not wish to allow conservatives a place in the future politics of Spain. (Source Please)
Violent Anti-Clericalism
''See also:
Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War''
The extent of violent anti-clericalism among government supporters was a strong impetus for the opposition to take up arms. Franco and many of his supporters were shocked by government supporters' violence against clergy and church property. This violent atheism, mixed with Marxism, encouraged many supporters of Catholicism to join the attack against the government.
Relationship with Hitler and Mussolini
The nature of the relationship between his politics and those of contemporaries
Hitler and
Mussolini is confused and unclear.
Franco received important support from
Hitler and
Mussolini during the civil war. He remained emphatically neutral in the
Second World War, but nonetheless offered various kinds of support to Italy and Germany. He allowed Spanish soldiers to volunteer to fight in the German Army against
Stalin (the
Blue Division), but forbade Spaniards to fight in the west against the liberal democracies. Franco's common ground with
Hitler was particularly weakened by Hitler's propagation of a
pseudo-pagan mysticism and his attempts to
manipulate Christianity, which went against Franco's deep commitment to defending Christianity and Catholicism.
Unlike
Hitler and
Mussolini, Franco did not create or fanatically propagate any ideology. His long rule of Spain shows great variations in political and economic policy depending on the prevalent conditions. The consistent points in his rule were quite limited, and were above all the unity and stability of Spain, the defence of Catholicism and the family, anti-
Freemasonry, and anti-Communism.
Deaths of opponents
The shooting of thousands of opponents during the civil war and in the early years after is a source of controversy and a notable negative point on Franco's record. The victims tended to be republican
prisoners of war, suspected
communists, and
Freemasons. Such killings became rare several years after the end of the war as Spain became peaceful and stable under the regime's suppression of dissent, but imprisonment and abuse of political opponents continued throughout Franco's period in power.
Economics
''See also:
Economic history of Spain: Economy under Franco''
The Civil War had ravaged the Spanish economy. Infrastructure had been damaged, workers killed, and daily business severely hampered. For more than a decade after Franco's victory, the economy improved little. Franco initially pursued a policy of
autarky, cutting off almost all international trade. The policy had devastating effects, and the economy stagnated. Economic growth picked up in 1959 after Franco took authority away from ideologues and gave more power to apolitical technocrats. The country implemented several development policies and growth took off creating the
Spanish Miracle. At the time of Franco's death, Spain still lagged behind most of Western Europe. After periods of rapid growth during the late 1980s and late 1990s, Spain now only lags slightly behind the other Western European economies.
Regions
Franco was reluctant to enact any form of administrative and legislative decentralisation and kept a fully centralised form of government with a similar administrative structure to that established by the
House of Bourbon and General
Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja. Such structures were both based in the model of the French centralised State.
Franco's legacy is still particularly poorly perceived in
Catalonia and the
Basque Country. The Basque Country and Catalonia were among the regions that offered the strongest resistance to Franco in the Civil War, but one of the strongest to his support during this regime. Franco dissolved the autonomy granted by the
Spanish Republic to these two regions and to
Galicia. Franco abolished the centuries-old fiscal privileges and autonomy in two of the three Basque provinces:
Guipuzcoa and
Biscay, but kept them for
Alava.
Among Franco's greatest area of support during the civil war was
Navarre, also a Basque speaking region in its north half. Navarre remained a separated region from the Basque Country and Franco decided to preserve its also centuries' old fiscal privileges and autonomy, the so-called
Fueros of Navarre.
Franco abolished the new official statute and recognition for the
Basque,
Galician, and
Catalan languages that the
Spanish Republic had granted for the first time in the history of Spain. He returned to
Spanish as the only official language of the State and education. The Franco era corresponded with the popularisation of the compulsory national educational system and the development of modern mass media, both controlled by the State and in Spanish language, and heavily reduced the number of speakers of Basque, Catalan and Galicianas, as it happened during the second half of the twentieth century with other European minority languages which were not officially protected like
Scottish Gaelic or French
Breton. But in 1968 were adopted new laws to protect basque from schools. By the 1970s the majority of the population in the urban areas could not speak in the
minority language or, (in fact the urban areas never were majoritaries) as in some Catalan towns, their use had been abandoned. The most endangered case was the Basque language. By the 1970s Basque had reached the point where any further reduction in the number of Basque speakers would have not guaranteed the necessary generational renewal and it is now recognised that the language would have disappeared in only a few more decades. This was the main reason that drove the franquist provincial government of
Alava to create a network of Basque medium schools (
Ikastola) in 1973 which were State financed. But during the second era of the governments of the General Franco were created new Foundations and Institutions before non-exist for save these language and dialects; and others from the forget and oblivion like: ''lliones'' and ''"''alto'' y ''bajoaragones''"''
Franco in popular media
★ ''
Raza'' or ''
Espíritu de una Raza'' (''Spirit of a Race'') (1941): based on a script by "Jaime de Andrade" (Franco himself), the semi-autobiographical story of a military officer played by
Alfredo Mayo.
★ '
Franco, ese hombre' ('Franco, the man') (1964): documentary film about Franco, directed by
José Luis Sáenz de Heredia.
[6]
★ ''
Espérame en el cielo'' (''Wait for Me in Heaven'') (1988): played by
José Soriano
★ '
Evita' (2000): Archive footage
★ In his satirical song ''The Folk Song Army'',
Tom Lehrer included this verse: "Remember the war against Franco / The one where each of us belongs / While he may have won all the battles / We had all the good songs."
★
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, was a recurring joke/
catchphrase on
Saturday Night Live spoken by
Chevy Chase during
Weekend Update during 1975-76.
References
1. Franco officially died on 20 November 1975, at the age of 82 — the same date as had José Antonio Primo de Rivera (39 years earlier), founder of the Falange. Franco is buried at Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, a site built with forced labor from prisoners of the Spanish Civil War.
2. New York Times. "Nixon Asserts Franco Won Respect for Spain." November 21, 1975, Friday, page 16.
3. Franco biography at the Ferrol website: "An order from the Ministry of Interior on the 30 of September in 1938 agreed the unanimous request of the Town Council of calling his native town " El Ferrol del Caudillo". This name was lost with the conquest of democracy when the first municipal corporation decided on the 28th of December in 1982 to recover the name of Ferrol." Archived on the Internet Archive 27 April 2005.
4. http://genealogia.netopia.pt/pessoas/pes_show.php?id=63980
5. http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/franco.html
6. Carmen Franco y Polo, 1st Duquesa de Franco on thePeerage.com. Accessed 8 August 2006.
7. Discurso de Franco a los cadetes de la academia militar de Zaragoza
8. Revolución de 1934
9. Sobre la imparcialidad del historiador y otras cuestiones de teoría de la Historia
10. Polémicas en El Catoblepas, ''El Catoblepas'', ISSN 1579-3974, lists seventeen recent (2003–2004) articles from this one publication under the heading "sobre la Historia de España (Guerra Civil, Octubre de 1934...)". Accessed 4 September 2006.
11. "Riots Sweep Spain on Left's Victory; Jails Are Stormed", ''The New York Times'', February 18, 1936.
12. Muggeridge, Malcolm, editor, ''Ciano's Diplomatic Papers'', Odhams, London, 1948: 17-18
13. Manifesto de las palmas
14. La Memoria de los Nuestros
15. Hugh Thomas, ''The Spanish Civil War'', revised and enlarged edition (1977), New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-014278-2. p. 258
16. Thomas writes, "to pacify, rather than to dignify, him." ''op. cit.'', p. 282.
17. Thomas, ''op. cit.'', p. 282.
18. Thomas, ''op. cit.'', p. 421.
19. Thomas, ''op. cit.'', pp 423–424.
20. Thomas, ''op. cit.'', p. 356.
21. Thomas, ''op. cit.'', pp 420–422.
22. Thomas, ''op. cit.'', p. 424.
23. Thomas, ''op. cit.'', pp 689–690.
24. ''The Spanish Republic and the civil war 1931-39'', by Gabriel Jackson, New Jersey, 1967
25. Hitler's Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery, , Richard, Bassett, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ,
26. Von Martyna Czarnowska, Almunia, Joaquin: EU-Kommission (4): Ein halbes Jahr Vorsprung, ''Weiner Zeitung'', 17 February 2005 (article in German language). Accessed 26 August 2006.
See also
★
History of Spain
★
Spain under Franco
★
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead
★
Ramón Serrano Súñer
★
Luis Carrero Blanco
★
Emilio Mola
★
Spanish Legion
★
Language politics in Francoist Spain
★
Movimiento Nacional
★
Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriótico
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
''''
External links
★ '
Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco ' National Foundation Francisco Franco.
★
Biographical page in Spanish about "Francisco Franco"
★ . He wrote the script for ''Raza'' under the name "Jaime de Andrade".
★
1939-1952: Armed resistance to Franco - a history of the marxist and anarchist guerrilla resistance movement to his regime
;Video
★
Documentary 52': When Franco died we were 30
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