This week marks 50 years since the death of Francisco Franco Bahamonde, “Head of State, Commander of the Armies, Commander of Spain and the Crusade by the grace of God.” In a few days, it will also be 70 years since Spain joined the United Nations. This was a very important step out of the isolation that Franco had led to with his victory in the civil war at the hands of the German Nazis and Italian fascists.
Only two years earlier, in 1953, the Franco regime had normalized relations with the Vatican, through an agreement, and with the United States, through an agreement providing for the establishment of American bases in our country in exchange for economic aid. It was about getting out of the nastiest phase. Let us remember the most horrific effects of the Civil War (1936 to 1939), according to the calculations of the most conservative historians: 150,000 dead in combat, 100,000 victims of executions and rear-guard deaths, 23,000 republicans shot in the post-war period, 0.5 million exiles, and 270,000 political prisoners in 1939.
A year after it joined the United Nations, in 1956, the first clashes began between the university opposition. In the “February Events of 1956” (Revelers and Rioters) there are, in principle, six detainees to whom more will later join: Dionisio Redruejo, from the Blue Section and General Director of Propaganda in Burgos, part author of Face to the sun; Miguel Sanchez Mazas, the eldest son of the dictator’s minister and the owner of the slogan “Stand with Spain!” Javier Pradera, the son and grandson of a traditionalist who shot, whose house Carmen Polo de Franco visited at snack time to take pity on the “little orphans”; José María Ruiz Gallardón, son of a journalist and a personal friend of the leader; Gabriel Elorriaga, leader of the University Students Union (SEU), Enrique Mujica and Ramon Tamames. The first four, the black legs of the system. This is how the famous statement of April 1, 1956 (co-written by Jorge Semprón and Javier Pradera) appeared, which said: “We launch it on this particular date – we are the children of the victors and the vanquished – because it is the day of the founding of a regime that has not been able to integrate us into an authentic tradition of reconciliation with Spain and with ourselves.”
This regime gradually tried to adapt to the Allied victory in World War II, and was bordering on the strictest Falanism, which was replaced by a different type of Catholic Syndicalism, or so-called National Catholicism, whose leadership positions would be occupied by members of Opus Dei, who sought the economic modernization of the country through a single party and without freedoms. Something like what Pinochet later tried, in Chile, or now Xi Jinping’s China.
It is not advisable to sugarcoat Francoism by focusing only on its last stage, which is the stage of development. When that system is weighed and evaluated these days, it will be necessary, in addition to the aforementioned oppression, to balance poverty, scarcity, ration cards, bankruptcy, hunger, the militarization of society, electricity restrictions, the black market, and so on. Historians Juan Pablo Fossi and Jordi Palafox, in their book Spain 1808-1996 (Espasa), when describing Franco’s dictatorship, say that he established a powerful new state, with military leadership, fascist ideas, national corporatism, and economic nationalism… “Francoism was a totalitarian and philosophically fascist regime until 1945; Catholic and pro-Western from 1945 (especially from 1947 to 1950, in the wake of the Cold War); technocratic and developmentalist since then.” 1957-1959 (…). Dictatorship has always been an oppressive regime.”
This system occupies most of the exceptions of the 20th century for Spain: 23 years of undemocratic constitutional monarchy, seven years of monarchy with dictatorship, eight years of republic (three of them in civil war), 36 years of Franco’s dictatorship, seven years of transition toward a society of freedoms, and 19 years of democracy.
The twenty-first century has broken this broken line. Let’s not go back to the same ones.
About The Author
