It has been half a century since Francisco Bahamonde Franco breathed his last. Franco ruled as El Caudillo (‘the Leader’) of Spain from 1936 to 1975. Most Spaniards regard him as a cruel reactionary control freak. Most of his legacy has been dismantled. All streets named in his honour in his time have since been renamed. All public statues of him have been removed. Likening someone to him is an insult in Spanish politics. Even Vox – the far-right party – expresses at best ambivalence about Franco’s record.
Spain is a country of over 40 million people in south-west Europe. It sits between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The Kingdom of Spain is a firm member of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. This Eurozone country has very close relations with its neighbours: France, Portugal and Andorra.
The Spanish economy was the laggard of Western Europe for decades. But in the last few years, it has been one of the few to have achieved healthy economic growth. However, unemployment, especially among the young, is high. Many people emigrate to work in richer European countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Christianity of the Catholic denomination used to be a core tenet of Spanish identity. But religiosity has declined dramatically. The Catholic Church is now marginal to Spanish life. The country is very liberal with same sex marriage being accepted. Spain also has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
There are still religious processions in Spain, especially at Easter. But people often say they participate for cultural rather than religious reasons.
Because Spain has sub-replacement fertility, the government is worried about the country emptying out. Spain is fairly relaxed about immigration because it needs people. The Spanish particularly welcome people from Latin America because they are native speakers of Spanish. One of the few ways in which Spain is a world power is that it is the home of one of the world’s top languages. There are over 500 million mother tongue speakers of the language.
There is a thriving tourist industry in Spain. It is one of the most visited countries in the world. It is the most popular foreign holiday destination for the British, Germans, Dutch and Danes. Some of the British people settled in Spain. Over 2% of the population of Spain is British.
Spain has immigration from outside the EU. Being so close to North Africa, a lot of people cross illegally and claim asylum. They are usually from Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria and Burkina Faso. Overwhelmingly, they are young men, and they usually claim asylum. The Spanish Police arrest them, and they are held in detention centres to process asylum claims. Claims are usually rejected, or else the person refuses to state his nationality and has destroyed his passport. With no way to establish a man’s identity or nationality, he cannot be deported. The men are released, but being illegal immigrants, they cannot legally work or claim social security payments.
All over Spain, particularly in coastal cities, there are young Black men selling clothes, watches, sunglasses, etc, on the street. Most are illegal immigrants or failed asylum seekers whom Spain cannot expel. This precarity for these men is better than penury in their homelands.
The King of Spain is Felipe VI. He looks every inch a king and stands 193 cm. The American-educated monarch speaks flawless English. He has two daughters and no sons. His eldest daughter has the title ‘Princess of Asturias’, which is the title of the heir apparent.
Felipe VI has gone a long way towards restoring the reputation of the monarchy. His father, Juan Carlo,s mired it in shame with his illegal business deals and his philandering. Juan Carlos abdicated in favour of his son.
Modern-day Spain is far from the vision of Franco. Franco wanted King Juan Carlos to maintain his ultra-conservative dictatorship. The motto was: Spain one, great and free. Few would say Spain was ‘free’ under Franco. But ‘free’ for him meant anti-communist.
Franco was born in a middle-class family in a town called Ferrol in the north-western Galicia region of Spain. His father was a bureaucrat in the navy. Franco had only one sibling, making his family exceptionally small for the time. His younger brother was a distinguished aviator who was considered an astonishingly glamorous occupation in the early 20th century.
The seminal event of Franco’s childhood was his country losing the Spanish-American War. This means that the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico were all lost to the Spanish Empire. Spain was left with only two colonies: Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara. Both were of negligible economic value. F.B. Franco had been brought up on tales of the splendours of the Spanish Empire. But then it was almost all gone. It was originally said of the Spanish, not the British Empire – the empire on which the sun never set.
In the 17th century, Spain had been the world's superpower. By the end of the 19th century, Spain was a synonym for failure. Technologically, it was decades behind other Western countries.
The Franco family was ultra-conservative and very religious. 90% of Spaniards were Catholics. Then there were a few atheists, Jews and Protestants. Religious devotion correlated strongly with conservative politics.
Franco was commissioned as an infantry officer. He served in Morocco when Spain invaded in the 1920s. The army was riven with corruption and suffered from underfunding. Spain suffered heavy defeats partly because the troops were not supplied with sufficient rations or ammunition. Its military technology was the most antiquated in Europe.
Spain eventually won the Rif Wars in conjunction with France. The Spanish managed to persuade some Moroccan tribes to change sides. These Moroccans in Spanish service soon proved to be some of Franco’s most effective troops. It is a bitter irony that the perfervid Catholic Franco so often needed Muslim troops to save him. Franco was aghast that left-wingers back in Spain openly opposed the war. They regarded it as at best unnecessary and at worst unrighteous.
Catalonia is a very distinctive region in Spain – some call it a nation. There is a very strong Catalan identity, and some wanted independence even a century ago. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia. The city was also a hotbed of far-left and anti-war activity. Franco saw it as pandemonium.
Spain suffered badly in the Great Depression in the 1930s. The monarchy had already been abolished in 1931. The king had undermined his already shaky popularity by being openly partisan in favour of the political right. He went into exile in Rome.
The Spanish Republic proclaimed in 1931 was despised by right-wingers. There was rising political violence. Many right-wingers refused to accept the legitimacy of the republic.
In July 1936, the civil war broke out. It was Nationalists versus Republicans. The Nationalists consisted of conservatives, fascists and committed Catholics. The Republicans were composed of communists, anarchists, socialists and separatists.
The Nationalists enlisted the aid of Italy and Germany. Italy sent tens of thousands of troops. The Germans sent dozens of warplanes. This foreign help may have been determinative.
In the end, the Nationalists won. Some Republicans fled to France, where they were interned. Tens of thousands of Republican Prisoners of War were executed. The others had to do penal servitude for years afterwards.
Franco’s full title was – the Leader of the Hispanic World in the final crusade against Bolshevism. He believed that there was a conspiracy of Jews, Freemasons and communists against Spain.
F.B. Franco may seem an unlikely dictator. He was below average height, chubby, balding, uncharismatic and cursed with a high-pitched and silly voice. Yet this belied his ambition and his ruthlessness.
Despite German help being vital to Franco in the 1930s, he kept Spain neutral in the Second World War. There was severe poverty in Spain in the 1940s. These were called the years of hunger.
Franco detested Catalan nationalism and Basque separatism. The Prime Minister of Catalonia was executed in 1940. He is the only democratically elected leader of any European country or region to suffer this fate. The Catalan and Basque languages were not allowed any public role. These identities were to be smothered.
In the 1970s, some Basque and Catalan separatists used force against the Spanish State. They scored occasional successes but never posed a serious threat to Spain.
Franco was racist and forbade his Moroccan troops from marrying Spaniards. If the police found that a Spanish woman was in a liaison with a Moroccan soldier, he was sent back to Morocco. The police intercepted all correspondence. This was to maintain the prestige of the race, as the official explanation stated.
The football team Real Madrid (meaning ‘royal Madrid’) became the semi-official team of the regime. Fervent fans of the club were usually ardent Francoists.
In the Cold War, Franco emphasised that he was a fervent anti-communist. This brought much-needed American aid. Spain was the only Western country to send troops to help the Americans in Vietnam. It was a 30-man medical unit.
Under Franco, there was only one political party – the National Movement. There were official youth movements to inculcate traditional values into children. There was a ‘Women’s Section’ – an official women’s movement to indoctrinate women into housewifery and submission. The ideal Spanish woman was married by 20, the mother of 5 children by 30 and a weekly churchgoer.
In the late 20th century, Spain was one of the poorer countries in Western Europe: the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain). In the 1950s, many Spaniards started going to more prosperous European nations in search of work. Spain was a dictatorship, but it did not prevent emigration. Spain relied on remittances, and Franco recognised it was wiser to let the discontented leave than to keep them in Spain fomenting opposition. France was the main destination as it was Spain’s immediate neighbour, the Spanish can learn French very easily, it is a similar culture, and if a Spaniard has a religion, it is the same as most Frenchmen: Catholic Christianity.
Spain was so oppressive that even men were not allowed to be seen topless on the beach. No public religious activity was permitted except for that of the Catholic Church.
The secret police kept an eye on all dissidents. Spanish emigres in France set up the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in exile and the Communist Party.
Women who gave birth outside marriage were usually sent to a convent to be indoctrinated by nuns. The babies were taken away to be adopted by zealous Catholic couples.
In the 1960s, tourism started on a large scale. Package holidays became affordable for even working-class people in the UK and the Netherlands. Franco welcomed much-needed money. He was also wary of the immoral, left-wing and secular influences of northern Europe.
Uncharacteristically, Franco granted independence to Equatorial Guinea. This African country soon became a communist hellhole so ghastly that it made Franco seem like a saviour.
Franco had to think about succession. He decided to restore the monarchy, but only after his death. The Spanish royal family was brought back from exile in Rome in 1948. Franco thought the heir of King Alfonso – the Count of Barcelona – was too liberal. Therefore, Franco decided to skip a generation and have Juan Carlos as his heir. So, the kingship was to go from the grandfather (Alfonso) to the grandson (Juan Carlos) and not to the intermediate generation (Count of Barcelona).
Juan Carlos trained as a military officer and attended university, but never learnt English. Franco thought Juan Carlos was a man of reliably ultra-conservative opinions. A marriage to a Greek princess was arranged, and this was blessed with three children.
In 1975, it became obvious that Franco was dying. A British journalist sent to cover the death of Franco complained that it took 6 weeks. They say the hospital was more or less inflating a corpse for a few weeks. They kept him alive until 20 November – the anniversary of the martyrdom of a right-wing figure, Antonio Primo de Rivera.
As soon as Franco died, Juan Carlos was sworn in as king. To many people’s surprise, he soon liberalised. The reforms included lifting the ban on all parties, including the communists. Political prisoners were freed. Basque and Catalan gained official status. Democracy was restored, and the Catholic Church lost all connection with the state. This set Spain on a trajectory to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1985.