The man known to history as General Franco
was born on the 4th of December 1892 as Francisco Franco Bahamonde in the coastal city of El
Ferrol in the province of Galicia in the north-west of Spain. His father was Nicolas Franco, a descendant
of an Andalusian family which had served in the Spanish navy for six generations, back
into the early eighteenth century, and Nicolas himself would continue this tradition, working
as an officer in the Spanish Naval Administrators’ Corp in the late nineteenth century, however,
the relationship between Nicolas and his son Francisco would prove to be fraught, Nicolas
being eccentric and a somewhat decadent character, traits which his son grew to dislike in his
father. Francisco’s mother was Maria del Pilar Bahamonde
de Andrade, a native Galician from a well to do upper-middle class family, Francisco
would grow to become close to his mother, admiring her Roman Catholic piety and the
serious demeanour she displayed in contrast to his father. As Francisco grew up he developed a disciplined
and serious character himself from a young age, he was originally destined for a career
in the Spanish Navy, like multiple generations of the Francos before him, however, his family
life was thrown into turmoil in 1907 when Francisco was just fourteen years old, at
this time his father, Nicolas, abandoned his family and would soon marry another woman
in Madrid, Francisco never forgave him and only maintained a limited relationship with
his father for the remainder of his life. It is hardly a coincidence that just around
the time that Nicolas Franco abandoned his family in Galicia, Francisco discarded any
plans to join the Spanish Navy and instead entered the Spanish Infantry Academy in Toledo
at just fourteen years of age, though the decision was also partly attributable to the
massive decline in the Spanish Navy in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Francisco eventually graduated in 1910 as
a second lieutenant, his performance at the Academy had been relatively modest, graduating
towards the lower end of his class, but this can be partially explained by his age, many
of the cadets at Toledo being two or three years older than Franco. The Spain that Franco now entered military
service for, was on the cusp of a protracted political emergency, indeed it had been enduring
a very prolonged crisis in one shape or another for two centuries, in the sixteenth century
Spain had been the foremost European power, the superpower of its day, fuelled by an enormous
empire in the New World and huge gold and silver bullion flows from Mexico and Peru,
however, in the seventeenth century the Spanish Empire had entered into a period of rapid
decline as those same bullion inflows from the Americas dried up, such that by the eighteenth
century Spain was a second-rate power with a backward, under-developed economy, moreover,
the country’s politics were crippled by the excessive power of the Roman Catholic
Church and an ineffective monarchy, then in the early nineteenth century independence
movements in South America and Central America robbed the country of most of its overseas
empire. However, a reform movement was underway, during
the first years of the nineteenth century the country fell into the orbit of Napoleonic
France and a new generation of Spanish politicians was calling for a complete overhaul of the
country’s politics, economy and society, a new liberal constitution was adopted in
1812, but tensions remained, as a result the civil war known as the First Carlist War occurred
between 1833 and 1840 over the succession to the monarchy and disputes between liberals
and conservatives within the country. Two further Carlist Wars would follow in the
late 1840s and the mid-1870s, the Third Carlist War having briefly seen the monarchy suspended
and the First Spanish Republic created between 1873 and 1874, thus, when Franco was born
in 1892 the country had been subjected to nearly a century of conflict between left-leaning
liberal reformers who wished to reduce the power of the monarchy, aristocracy and Roman
Catholic Church, and right-leaning conservatives determined to keep the traditional structures
of Spanish society and politics in place, these twin forces would continue to dominate
Spanish politics into the early twentieth century and shape the course of Franco’s
life. At the time that he left the Infantry Academy
in Toledo in 1910, though, the more calamitous political confrontations which Spain was to
endure in the 1930s were still some way off, in the early 1910s the Iberian state’s main
concerns lay in North Africa, where the country held some of the last vestiges of its once
great colonial empire, having lost the bulk of its other possessions in the Caribbean
and the Philippines in the late 1890s, in particular Morocco had become a major focus
of Spanish imperial activity, the country had held territories here for several centuries,
notably the city of Ceuta across the Straits of Gibraltar. Spanish interest in the region had been further
expanded in the First Hispano-Moroccan War between 1859 and 1860 and brief conflicts
with some of the Rif tribes of northern Morocco in 1893 and again in 1909, a more substantial
land grab was effected in November 1912 when a treaty was agreed between France and Spain
whereby Morocco was divided between them, Spain acquiring the entire north coast of
the country and a strip of land in the south, while France took the more expansive central
parts of Morocco. Yet, while the agreement between the two European
powers had established their respective spheres of influence, making a reality of Spanish
rule in the newly acquired territory was a more protracted affair, efforts to pacify
the various tribes and political groupings in Morocco would occupy the attentions of
the Spanish military for the remainder of the 1910s, thus it was that Franco, fresh
from the Academy in Toledo, volunteered to take up a position in North Africa in 1912
at the age of 19. Franco’s service in Morocco began his swift
assent within the Spanish military, in 1913 he was promoted to first lieutenant in an
elite regiment of Moroccan cavalry, he became well-known for his professionalism and command
abilities and also for the concern he showed for the well-being of the troops under his
command, in 1915 he was appointed as a captain, the youngest individual in the entire Spanish
army to hold that post, but the following year in 1916 he suffered a serious gunshot
wound in the abdomen, as a result, the young Franco, now just 24 years of age, was sent
back to Spain and would spend the next few years back in southwestern Europe. The establishment of the Spanish Foreign Legion
in 1920 and Franco’s appointment as second in command of the newly established brigade
was the direct cause of his return to North Africa in the early 1920s as yet another war
erupted between the Spanish and the Berber tribes of the Rif Mountains, one which would
last on this occasion for half a decade between 1921 and 1926. In 1923 he was further promoted to the top
command of the Spanish Foreign Legion, the same year that he married Maria del Carmen
Polo, with whom he would have a daughter in 1926, like her mother she was named Maria
del Carmen and she would be Franco’s only child. Shortly after their marriage in 1923 he was
called to visit Madrid for an audience with the Spanish King, Alfonso XIII, this meeting
was indicative of the growing fame which Franco was earning within Spain for his military
service in Morocco, moreover, this occurred at a time when the power of the military was
growing, in September 1923 the king endorsed what was effectively a seizure of power by
General Miguel Primo de Rivera who would head the Spanish government for the next seven
years with the slogan ‘Country, Religion, Monarchy’, a clear indication of his desire
to rule Spain along traditional, conservative lines. Back in North Africa, Franco was instrumental
in bringing the Rif war to a successful conclusion in the course of 1925 and 1926, his reputation
now soared throughout Spain to that of a national hero and on the 3rd of February 1926 he was
rewarded with a promotion to the rank of brigadier general, Franco was just 33 years of age at
the time and the elevation to the rank of general made him one of the youngest generals
in any European army. Two years later he was appointed as the director
of the newly established General Military Academy in the city of Zaragoza, these actions
of the 1920s were crucial for later events, as Franco’s subsequent rise to power in
the 1930s was predicated to a large extent on the reputation he had gained for his command
in North Africa and also the loyal following he engendered amongst graduates from the Academy
in Zaragoza between 1928 and the early 1930s. The events which would eventually culminate
in the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s ascent to power have their origins in 1930, in late
January that year the effective head of the Spanish government since 1923, General Miguel
Primo de Rivera, was forced to resign owing to a deepening economic crisis in Spain and
public discontent with the direction of the country’s politics, there now followed fifteen
months of political instability in the country culminating in municipal elections in April
1931 in which the Republicans won over 40% of the vote as opposed to just 25% for the
Monarchists, this was perceived as a referendum on the monarchy of King Alfonso XIII, one
which he listened to the result of, on the night of the 14th of April 1931, just two
days after the elections, he left Spain without abdicating, earlier that same day the Second
Spanish Republic had been formally declared, ending the Spanish monarchy and ushering in
a new period of Spanish politics. The leaders of the newly proclaimed republic
now undertook wide-ranging reforms of the country, its economy, the role of the Church
and the military, as someone who was closely associated with Alfonso’s rule and de Rivera’s
government, Franco’s career now stalled, he was removed from his position at the academy
in Zaragoza and the school itself was dissolved, Franco was a monarchist and was ideologically
opposed to the Second Spanish Republic, but he nevertheless indicated his willingness
to accept the new dispensation and work with the government in the early 1930s, this, however,
was not enough to prevent the new government from effectively demoting him to a number
of minor commands during the first years of the Second Spanish Republic. The new republic was bedevilled by instability
during its brief life, including attempted coups and regional instability, all of which
would eventually culminate in the Spanish Civil War, before that calamitous conflict
erupted, however, the country lurched from liberal to conservative regimes and back again,
in 1933 the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right were the victors in elections to the
Spanish legislature, prizing power from the liberal parties which had seized power in
1931. The 1933 elections were a boon for Franco’s
flagging career, he was restored to a more active command and in 1934 he was promoted
to major general, that October he was placed in charge of suppressing a violent revolt
amongst miners in the province of Asturias, who were unhappy with the growing influence
of the conservatives within the Spanish government cabinet, his successful prosecution of the
Asturias insurrection would see him appointed as Chief of the Spanish Army’s General Staff
on the 19th of May 1935, the insurgency in Asturias and Franco’s stated views on it
also points to where his ideological views and personal politics lay by this time, Franco
described the insurgency as a ‘frontier war’, one being perpetrated by socialists
and communists with the goal of overthrowing civilization itself in Spain. Franco’s anti-leftist credentials were being
established in this manner just as the Spanish political landscape was lurching into its
ultimate crisis, a series of scandals in the mid-1930s led to the dissolution of parliament
and the calling of new elections for February 1936, this occurred at a time when the country’s
politics had polarised to an unprecedented extent, between a left block of communists,
socialists and radical republicans united into a coalition termed the Popular Front,
and a right block of monarchists, conservatives, Spanish traditionalists and ultra-Catholics,
with the latter having a large amount of support from elements within the military hierarchy
and the colonial administration in North Africa, despite this coalition on the right, the left
were victorious in the elections of 1936 and Manuel Azana, the leader of the Republican
Left party was quickly made president in a new government of the left. Azana’s appointment as president in 1936
was the catalyst for elements on the right and in particular within the military to now
begin plotting a coup d’état, as this was occurring Franco was effectively in exile,
in February 1936 he had been sent to the Canary Islands as a military commander there, a position
which was effectively a form of banishment from Spain itself, up to this point General
Franco had largely remained aloof from any of the political parties in Spain, but he
was now contacted by those elements within the military who wished to overthrow the government
of the Second Spanish Republic in order to end the anarchy which had characterised Spain’s
politics throughout the 1930s, in June 1936 he met with the officers in question in a
forest on the island of Tenerife to discuss the coup, at this point Franco refused to
commit to the insurrection, but in the weeks ahead he did so. The revolt would be led by three individuals. General José Sanjurjo, a monarchist opponent
of the Second Republic who was living in exile in Portugal, would be its symbolic head, while
Emilio Mola y Vidal, first Duke of Mola, would lead the revolt on the Spanish mainland, Franco
took command of the Spanish colonial armies in North Africa. The Spanish Civil War began on the 17th of
July 1936, a day earlier than planned, when the Army of Africa rebelled in Morocco, the
following day Franco flew from the Canary Islands to North Africa as the rebel forces
were seizing control of large parts of Spain, by the end of July the insurrectionists, who
were now referring to their broad coalition of political groupings as the Nationalists,
had gained the support of elements throughout North Africa and in the towns and hinterlands
of Zaragoza, Seville, Cordoba, Valladolid, Burgos and Pamplona in Spain itself, however,
the government, broadly identified as the Republicans, managed to maintain control over
the larger cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Malaga and Valencia, with the two
sides both holding or seizing substantial parts of the country, the stage was set for
a prolonged and bitter conflict. This was exacerbated by the political, economic
and military aid which both sides were receiving, the Republicans would quickly be supported
by Soviet Russia, while aid and direct military support was channelled to the Nationalists
by the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler in Germany and the Fascist government of Benito
Mussolini in Italy, other nations such as the United States, France and Britain declared
their neutrality but could not stop independent brigades forming and travelling to Spain to
fight on behalf of one side or the other. As a result of all this the Spanish Civil
War became a proxy war in the wider showdown between the political Right and Left in Europe
in the years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, it also acted as a means
of trialling the new developments in military hardware which had been made since the First
World War, notably the rapid advances in airplanes which had occurred since the 1910s. The Civil War itself became a long war of
attrition, having quickly seized the Spanish protectorate in North Africa in late July
1936, Franco was able to convey a large proportion of the North Africa army, which consisted
of approximately 30,000 men, to Andalusia in southwestern Spain in early August, he
then began a march on Madrid with the goal of seizing the Spanish capital from the Republicans
and bringing the war to a swift conclusion, however, by the time he advanced on the city
in October 1936, significant enough aid had been channelled to the Republicans by the
Soviets and other Communist powers that Franco failed to secure the Spanish capital, with
this the possibility of a short, swift victory for the Nationalists had passed. As the war settled down into a protracted
struggle in late 1936 and into 1937 the Nationalists organised themselves into a provisional government
at Burgos, a town to the north of Madrid which had been a capital of the Kingdom of Castile
and was a symbolic site for the Nationalists’ government during the Civil War, on the 1st
of October 1936 Franco was proclaimed Generalissimo of the Nationalist Army. He would soon become the supreme leader of
the Nationalists in the Civil War, as on just the third day of the rebellion, the 20th of
July 1936, General José Sanjurjo had been killed when flying back to Spain from Portugal,
then on the 3rd of June 1937, Emilio Mola was also killed in an air accident when his
plane flew into the side of a mountain as a result of bad weather when flying to Vitoria
in the Basque country, this left Franco as the undisputed leader of the Nationalists
in the Civil War and paved the way for his dictatorship in its aftermath. 1937 also witnessed the formation of the political
party which would come to dominate Spanish politics until the 1970s, in 1934 in the firmament
of Spanish radical politics prior to the outbreak of the Civil War a new political party, the
Falange Espanola or Spanish Phalanx had been established, this was effectively a Fascist
party in the vein of the National Socialists in Germany, it was far right, anti-Communist
and a champion of the Roman Catholic Church. Franco had not been associated with the Falange
in its early years, but in April 1937 he now merged the fascist party with a number of
other political groupings of the right in Spain such as the monarchists and ultra-Catholic
groupings to form the Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista,
meaning the Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx of the Councils of the National Syndicalist
Offensive. Thus, from the summer of 1937 Franco was the
undisputed leader of the Nationalists, the Nationalists were also making headway in securing
the more peripheral parts of the country, by early 1937 they controlled the bulk of
the west of the country, with key strongholds in Corunna and Leon in the north and Seville
and Granada in the south, while the Republicans retained control of the eastern coastal parts
of Spain, the Basque country in the northeast and the central Meseta region, including Madrid,
in 1937 the focus of military operations largely lay in the northeast in the Basque country,
which was secured for the Republican cause in the early months of the war, a concerted
effort to secure the area by the Nationalists was undertaken in the spring of 1937. The Basque campaign has become infamous for
the perpetration of the most notorious atrocity committed in the course of the Spanish Civil
War, this was the bombing of the town of Guernica in northern Spain in late April 1937, it was
carried out by the Condor Legion, provided by Nazi Germany, and the Legionary Air Force
sent to Spain by Italy, hundreds of Spanish civilians were killed in order to pave the
way for Franco’s subsequent capture of Bilbao in the region and the securing of northern
Spain for the Nationalist cause, the number of casualties is a matter of considerable
contention, estimates ranging from several hundred to upwards of a thousand, these were
largely civilians, and there is little doubting that it constituted a major atrocity by the
Nationalists. In the aftermath of Guernica the Nationalists
made rapid advances in the north and northeast, the regional capital of Bilbao fell to them
on the 19th of June 1937 after a two month long siege and the conquest of the Basque
country was completed in October 1937, bringing the Nationalists into more secure control
of the northeast and the Aragonese countryside further south, the Republicans, however, retained
strongholds in the Meseta and all along the Mediterranean coast, including the cities
of Barcelona and Valencia. 1938 was the critical year in deciding the
outcome of the war, in the closing weeks of 1937 the Republicans attempted to retake the
city of Teruel in eastern Aragon, lying inland from the Mediterranean coast roughly halfway
between Barcelona and Valencia, their goal was twofold, if Teruel could be captured it
would better secure Catalonia for the Republican cause, while it was also believed that a pincer
movement into the region would distract Franco from any attempt to take Madrid. The town soon became the focus of an intense
confrontation between the Republicans and the Nationalists, both sides flooded the region
with well in excess of 100,000 troops each in the dying weeks of 1937 and the first days
of 1938, Franco himself diverted his attentions to Teruel just before Christmas Day 1937,
bloody and intense fighting between December and February would see each side suffer over
60,000 casualties, a death toll which was compounded by the worst winter that Spain
had endured in twenty years, the Republicans eventually took the town early in January,
before a sustained Nationalist counter-offensive reclaimed it in mid-February, bringing the
Battle of Teruel to an end. Teruel effectively exhausted the resources
of the Republicans and has a significance for the course of the Spanish Civil War far
in excess of the strategic importance of the town itself, in the aftermath of it, Franco
wasted little time in taking advantage of having gained the strategic upper hand, in
early March an offensive eastwards towards the Mediterranean coastline was underway and
by April the Nationalists had entered the provinces of Catalonia and Valencia, securing
a large stretch of the Mediterranean coastline by mid-April, as a result of this offensive
the Republicans were suing for peace terms by the early summer of 1938 and had been reduced
to holding the Meseta eastwards to Valencia and a small isolated pocket of territory in
the northeast centred on Barcelona. The final push came in late 1938 and early
1939. On the 23rd of December 1938 the Nationalists
invaded Catalonia, cut off from the main Republican strongholds between Madrid and Valencia, the
leftists had little hope here, Tarragona fell on the 15th of January 1939 and a major event
occurred on the 26th when Barcelona was taken by Franco’s forces, an event which made
it clear that the Civil War was effectively over, weeks later the governments of Britain
and France, which had previously tried to avoid officially favouring one side or the
other, recognised Franco and the Falangists as the official government of Spain. The Spanish Civil War was brought to an end
in the spring of 1939, on the 6th of March the Republican Prime Minister, Juan Negrin,
fled to France in the face of an insurrection within the Republican military, which now
sued for peace terms, a final military operation by the Nationalists began in late March, on
the 28th of March Franco’s troops entered Madrid followed two days later by the capitulation
of Valencia, on the 1st of April Franco made a speech which was broadcast via radio throughout
Spain, in which he declared victory for the Nationalist cause, that same day the last
Republican stronghold, the Mediterranean town of Alicante, surrendered, after nearly three
years the Spanish Civil War was over, Franco was now the undisputed ruler of Spain. Franco’s first weeks as the unequivocal
head of the Spanish state were bloody, leading historians of the regime estimate that at
least 30,000 Republicans were executed in the weeks and months following the cessation
of hostilities, while tens of thousands more were imprisoned, hundreds of thousands more
fled from the country, many leaving for South America, and approximately half a million
streaming over the Pyrenees to France to find refuge there, for years afterwards such persecution
of Republicans and their families would continue and is one of the greatest crimes of Franco’s
regime. Although Spain’s new leader aspired to rejuvenate
the country in the aftermath of the war, he was to be instantly thwarted in this by events
elsewhere in Europe involving his erstwhile allies, Nazi Germany’s involvement in the
Spanish Civil War had been just one component of a much wider pattern of German aggression
throughout Europe during the mid-to-late-1930s, in March 1936 the Rhineland region of western
Germany was remilitarised, two years later in March 1938 a more aggressive action was
taken when Germany effectively annexed Austria into greater Germany, then in early 1939 the
rest of Central Europe was brought under Nazi control when parts of Czechoslovakia and Hungary
were formed into puppet regimes or annexed, Britain and France had tried to appease Hitler
and the Nazis as all of this was occurring, but when Germany invaded Poland on the 1st
of September 1939 it was a step too far, two days later the governments in London and Paris
declared war. One might have assumed that Franco would have
been an obvious ally of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy when the Second World War erupted throughout
Europe in September 1939, after all, both the Germans and the Italians had provided
significant, perhaps crucial support, to the Spanish Fascists during the Spanish Civil
War and as a result had paved the way for Franco’s rise to power, and yet Spain would
remain neutral for the most part throughout the conflict. Franco’s reasons for not joining the Axis
Powers during the war were mixed, in the autumn of 1939 the motive was sheer war exhaustion,
the Spanish Civil War had only been brought to an end in April 1939 and there was a country
to be rebuilt and civil strife to be recovered from when the issue arose of whether to join
Hitler and Mussolini in their general war just a few months later. But Franco’s stance in this regard shifted
considerably in the months ahead, following the lightning quick conquest of Denmark, Norway,
the Low Countries and France by Germany in the late spring and early summer of 1940,
the Spanish dictator indicated to Hitler in mid-June 1940 that he was willing to join
the war, negotiations to this effect were held at Hendaye in southern France on the
23rd of October 1940 between Franco and Hitler, but here the German Chancellor balked at Franco’s
demands for supplies from Germany and a promise of future control of Gibraltar and French
North Africa. Once these early negotiations to bring Spain
directly into the war on the side of the Axis Powers failed, Franco generally steered an
opportunistic, ‘politique’ course for the remainder of the war, for instance, he
sanctioned the formation of a unit of Spanish volunteers to serve in the German war effort,
but strictly stipulated that this ‘Blue Division’ was only to be allowed to serve
on the Eastern Front against Soviet Russia, as he did not wish to damage Spain’s relations
with the US and Britain, similarly Spanish troops were stationed in the Pyrenees from
1941 onwards to prevent against any attempt by Hitler to occupy the Iberian Peninsula
for strategic reasons. More revealingly Franco shifted his stance
as the course of the war altered in 1942 and 1943, with the German armies having been stopped
on the Eastern Front and then forced into a retreat back towards Poland and Germany
by the advancing Soviet Red Army, Franco saw that Hitler and his allies were doomed and
accordingly began engaging in a more strict neutrality and was increasingly accommodating
of the Allies from 1943 onwards. Allied troops who were downed in France in
air missions could flee to Spain and were given safe passage back to their respective
countries from the Iberian Peninsula, this certainly gained the appreciation of both
the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt,
at the time, but Franco was not so well-liked in the aftermath of the war by the western
powers, in the aftermath of the global conflict Spain was not invited to join the newly established
United Nations owing to the sympathetic stance it had displayed towards Nazi Germany during
the war and the country under Franco was ultimately excluded from that international body until
1955. Once the Second World War concluded in 1945,
Spain finally found itself free of either its own Civil War being fought internally
or a global war raging everywhere around it for the first time in nearly a decade, indeed
the thirty years between 1945 and Franco’s death in 1975 was, despite the dictatorship,
arguably the most protracted period of political stability enjoyed by Spain since the eighteenth
century. Francoist Spain, as it is known, was ruled
by Franco as the supreme head of state, who took on the title of Caudillo de Espana meaning
‘the Leader of Spain’. There is little doubting that this was in
essence a dictatorship, but it was one which became more optimistic in the aftermath of
the Second World War, and although Franco courted the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy at the time of the Spanish Civil War, Franco cannot really be termed an ideological
fascist himself. His was a military dictatorship, one which
sought to foster the core values of the conservative movement which had formed one part of Spain’s
political landscape since the nineteenth century, specifically nationalism, support for the
Roman Catholic Church and an opposition to leftist politics, particularly socialists
and communists, the Falange Espanola which Franco had formed out of the various right-wing
Spanish political parties in 1937 was the sole legal party in the country between the
conclusion of the Civil War in 1939 and the end of the Franco regime in the 1970s, but
there was also a distinct drift away from the party’s fascist roots of the 1930s during
the post-war period, symbolised in the rebranding of the Falange as the Movimiento Nacional
or National Movement in 1958. Yet this is not to suggest that Franco did
not engage in harsh political repression, trade unionism and left-leaning political
organisations were generally monitored and suppressed, while many socialist organisations
were banned by the state, similarly, Franco’s regime sought to impose a harsh suppression
of the many regional separatist movements in areas such as the Basque country and Catalonia
which have so characterised the history of modern Spain. Such policies, though, were only so effective,
indeed in some instances they proved counterproductive, attempts to curb Basque separatism, for instance,
simply eventuated in the formation of the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna organisation, or ETA
for short, in 1959, meaning ‘Basque Homeland and Liberty’, ETA developed in the 1960s
into a terrorist, paramilitary organisation, bent on using bombings, assassinations and
kidnappings to pressure the Spanish state in order to gain independence for the Basque
region in northern Spain. Other authoritarian policies have cast a long
shadow over the Franco regime, surely one of the most heinous aspects of Franco’s
dictatorship was the abduction of the children of Spanish Republicans and their fostering
out to Nationalist families, much of the goal here was a form of social engineering whereby
these children, who would most likely be raised as left-leaning socialists and republicans
if they remained in their original family units, would now be raised as conservatives
and traditionalists in line with the political ideologies of the Francoist regime. This practice had started during the Civil
War, often involving children whose parents had been killed during the conflict, but it
intensified to soon involve the children of Republicans who were arrested and imprisoned,
it continued into the 1940s before petering out in the 1950s and eventually involved tens
of thousands of children, perhaps into the hundreds of thousands, many of these children
never knew the circumstances of their birth or were never repatriated to their parents,
and the legacy of what has been termed ‘the Lost Children of Francoism’ was undoubtedly
one of the worst crimes perpetrated by Franco’s dictatorship. Elsewhere in the 1940s and 1950s the powerful
position of the Roman Catholic Church throughout Spanish society was cemented through Franco’s
policies, the church’s close alliance with Franco ensured that it was given almost complete
control over the country’s educational system, including Spain’s universities where lecturers
and professors were screened for their Catholic credentials and in Spanish society, divorce,
contraception and abortions were all prohibited, most oppressive was the treatment of women
in Spanish society, the Second Republic had adopted many of the progressive measures which
had developed for women’s rights in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, but these laws
were now repealed and women were increasingly confined to traditional roles in the 1940s
and 1950s, as a result women in Spain were prohibited from working in many professions,
and needed the permission of a husband or male relative to do something as simple as
open a bank account. The middle years of the Franco regime in the
late 1950s also saw considerable changes in Spain’s colonial possessions in North Africa,
in 1956 the French-held parts of Morocco gained independence and the Spanish state simultaneously
agreed to relinquish some of the territory it had acquired in northwest Africa nearly
a half a century earlier. Yet this did not prevent conflict erupting
between Franco’s Spain and the Morocco of Sultan Mohammed V in 1957. The Ifni War, as it has become known, dragged
on for eight months into the summer of 1958 and resulted in Spain ceding Tarfaya to Morocco,
further territory would be ceded in subsequent years and the Spanish colonies in the Gulf
of Guinea were granted independence as Equatorial Guinea in 1968, whilst in 1975 shortly before
Franco’s death a withdrawal began from the extensive territory known as Spanish Sahara,
the sovereignty of which is still contested today between Morocco and Mauritania, yet
some small enclaves in north-western Africa have been retained down to the present day,
notably the cities of Ceuta and Melilla in northern Morocco. There were ambiguities to all of this, as
time passed and the memory of the Civil War faded, and the regime became more liberal. The ‘White Terror’, as the Francoist oppression
of Republicans both during and immediately after the war has become known, petered out
gradually in the 1940s, though much of this was owing to the regime simply no longer having
any enemies at home to persecute, concentration camps which had been set up to hold Republican
prisoners in the late 1930s, gradually disappeared from Spain, the last one, that at Miranda
de Ebro near Burgos, was closed in 1947, by way of contrast, from the late 1950s onwards,
and in particular during the 1960s unofficially sanctioned trade unions began to operate in
Spain and were not crushed or clamped down on in the manner which they almost certainly
would have been had they tried to operate in the 1940s. In other ways Spanish society was undergoing
some limited liberalisation from the late 1950s onwards, for instance, some of the restrictions
on what women could or could not do were relaxed in the 1960s, censorship of the press and
the media also became less severe in the last fifteen or so years of Franco’s dictatorship,
although any overt criticism of the regime itself remained a crime, much of this must
be viewed in light of the country’s drift into the western, capitalist block of states
led by the United States during the Cold War from 1955 onwards, as Spain found common ground
with these countries, Franco became less authoritarian at home and more inclined to liberalise certain
aspects of Spanish society. The ambiguities of Franco’s dictatorship
are most clearly evident when examining his economic policy, it is impossible to dismiss
the success of Spain’s economy during Franco’s tenure as the Spanish head of state, ever
since the late seventeenth century the country had languished in a state of seemingly perpetual
economic backwardness, with a lack of industry and an over reliance on unproductive farming
methods carried out on large estates, all of this was compounded by the devastation
caused by the Spanish Civil War, and for much of the 1940s the country was on the brink
of bankruptcy with only a meagre economic recovery occurring. However, from the late 1950s economic growth
took off to such an extent that the last fifteen or so years of Franco’s regime has been
dubbed ‘the Spanish Miracle’ or El Milagro Espanol in economic terms, during these years
the country had the second fastest growing economy in the world, only Japan, which was
undergoing its own economic miracle, grew at a faster rate between the late 1950s and
the early 1970s. The ‘Spanish Miracle’ came about owing
to a combination of factors, not least a series of national development plans devised by Franco’s
ministers and the adoption of a free market economy in 1959, iron and steel factories
proliferated in the northern provinces and these in turn supplied raw materials for a
thriving shipbuilding industry in the ports of the northern coast, petrochemicals became
a major national industry and new corporations emerged, notably the SEAT automobile company,
in 1946 there were just over 70,000 private cars in Spain, this number had increased to
over one million cars twenty years later, more than three-quarters of a million SEAT
cars were produced during the years of the ‘Spanish Miracle’. As a result of all this, Spain went from being
one of the most economically backward countries in Western Europe to being the world’s ninth
largest economy by the end of Franco’s regime, thereafter the global economic recession of
the mid-to-late-1970s saw Spain’s economic growth stall, but there is no doubting that
the ‘Spanish Miracle’ hauled the country’s economy out of the stagnation in which it
had wallowed for two centuries and brought it into the twentieth century, this, combined
with the massive expansion of the tourism sector in the post-Franco period, created
the economy of modern Spain, and whatever his other failings and crimes may have been,
this must be acknowledged as a major success of Franco’s time in power. Perhaps in assessing Franco’s career and
the nature of his regime we should also consider that he did not work to ensure the continuity
of his dictatorship, this might have been partly owing to his lack of a male heir, Franco’s
marriage produced just one child, his daughter, Maria del Carmen, born in 1926, had the Caudillo
had a male heir to pass the dictatorship to, he might have made provision to ensure that
this occurred, but he didn’t, indeed Franco had taken steps to restore the Spanish monarchy
as early as 1947, when an official referendum was held to make Spain a monarchy once again,
although it was passed, no new king was crowned at that time and Franco instead had his powers
as a regent for life ratified. As he neared the end of his life though, he
took more concerted steps to restore the monarchy, culminating in 1969 when Juan Carlos of the
old royal house of Bourbon was named as Franco’s successor and made a Prince, two years earlier
steps had been taken to allow freer elections to the Spanish legislature, then in 1973 Franco
resigned his position as premier of Spain and head of the government in favour of Luis
Carrero Blanco. Blanco was a long-standing ally of Franco’s
who had fought with the Generalissimo in North Africa in the 1920s and during the Spanish
Civil War, but his tenure as prime minister was short-lived as he was killed by a roadside
bomb by the Basque terrorist group, ETA, in the final days of 1973, two further individuals,
Torcuato Fernandez-Miranda and Carlos Arias Navarro, would subsequently serve as prime
ministers of Spain before Franco’s death, but despite this partial relinquishing of
power Franco retained many of his positions, still serving as head of state, albeit in
a much more limited capacity, and also retaining control over the Spanish military, nevertheless,
the measures taken from the late 1960s constituted some significant steps towards transitioning
towards a less authoritarian regime and at the end of Franco’s life and following his
death the country would quickly transition to a democracy. This would come in the mid-1970s. By the late 1960s Franco was approaching eighty
years of age, his health was declining considerably, this worsened into the 1970s, in part because
the Spanish dictator was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, in 1974 he was sufficiently incapacitated
on a number of occasions that his duties were passed in part to Prince Juan Carlos, his
last official engagement occurred on the 1st of October 1975 when he gave a speech in Madrid,
whereat he was said to have been particularly frail looking, four weeks later he fell into
a coma and was put on a life support machine. There is some dispute as to whether he died
on the 19th of November or in the early hours of the 20th, either from a heart attack or
septic shock, his body was buried in the Valley of the Fallen, a huge burial tomb near Madrid
which had been constructed as a mausoleum and a memorial to those who had died in the
Civil War, though it has recently been exhumed from here and removed to a family crypt on
the outskirts of the Spanish capital. Although he professed a commitment to maintaining
the system Franco had created and overseen for over thirty-five years, Juan Carlos moved
to rapidly dismantle the authoritarian Francoist state as soon as the Caudillo died in the
early winter of 1975, a constitutional monarchy was established in the three years that followed,
on the 15th of June 1977 the first free and open general election to have been held in
Spain since 1936 took place, returning a high number of centrist and left-wing delegates
to parliament, an indication of the shift away from the right-wing politics of the Franco-era. A year and a half later a new constitution
was ratified, in December 1978, this has become the basis of Spain’s modern constitutional
monarchy, the total failure of an attempted coup d’état in February 1981 by elements
within the Spanish military who wished to see a restoration of authoritarianism in Spain
was indicative of how quickly the country had successfully transitioned into a liberal
democracy in the years immediately following Franco’s death. General Francisco Franco is perhaps the most
ambiguous of the dictators who seized power throughout Europe in the mid-twentieth century,
he came to power as a result of a bloody Civil War in which the conservative, military bloc
which he led was forever tarnished through a series of atrocities such as occurred at
Guernica in April 1937 and through its associations with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in the
1930s and 1940s, in particular, Franco’s regime was responsible for the killing, arrest
or drastic interference in the lives of millions of Spanish civilians, this was especially
the case in the aftermath of the Civil War when the Spanish courts were dealing in the
summary conviction and execution of hundreds of Republicans every day for months on end,
any assessment of his career must start by acknowledging this terrible legacy. But there is also little doubting that the
Franco regime changed over time, in particular, as it entered the 1950s, Francoist Spain became
less repressive and, switching from an overt totalitarianism to a less brutal authoritarianism,
there were also a number of considerable advances in Spanish society in the last two decades
or so of Franco’s regime, with a growing affinity with the US western bloc of powers
from 1955 when the country was admitted to the United Nations, most significantly, the
Spanish economic miracle which occurred between 1959 and the mid-1970s finally hauled Spain
out of the economic malaise it had been languishing in since the eighteenth century and made it
one of the world’s ascendant economic powerhouses, this created economic opportunities and prosperity
for the Spanish working and middle class which was unparalleled up to that point in modern
Spanish history, this certainly does not excuse Franco’s crimes, but it should be considered
in any balanced appraisal of his time in power. And then there is the character of Franco
himself, who or what was he?, he was an exceptionally private man and the real Francisco Franco
is hard to identify, perhaps he might best be defined as a product of Spain itself and
one who shifted his own political stances in line with the prevailing trends of European
and global politics between the 1930s and the 1970s, in the years leading up to the
Civil War he was a staunch advocate of Spanish conservativism, one of the two prevailing
political stances in the country since the early nineteenth century, in this respect
he was an ardent anti-Communist, a feature which was perhaps the most consistent aspect
of his political views throughout his four decades in power. However, despite his ties to Hitler and Mussolini,
Francisco Franco was not really a fascist, and in the course of the 1950s, the regime
softened its stances considerably, eventually drifting towards closer ties with the US and
the western European states as the Cold War made the right-wing Spanish regime a natural
ally, thus, Franco adapted to fit the prevailing political winds, perhaps this was who he was
in the end, a political chameleon, born of the chaos of Spanish politics in the Age of
Extremes which characterised Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. What do you think of General Franco?, should
we view him entirely in light of his brutal takeover of Spain in the 1930s or did his
later rule substantially rehabilitate him from his earlier crimes?, please let us know
in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
