On Franco

With all the hype in Spain over Catalonia in the past six months...it's worth a moment to go back and review Franco.

For most Spaniards....you can figure by the end of your basic schooling period, there's been probably fifty hours minimum of school lecture over history, civics, and human rights....which go back to this period between 1930 and the 1970s, with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco Bahamonde.

Born on 4 December 1892....Franco was the son of a military-profession family, and found himself in a Spanish Army academy in 1907.  Based on various military 'adventures' over the next twenty years....Franco would find himself promoted to one-star general in February 1926.  At 34 year old, he was the youngest guy in Spanish history to ever make general, and at the time....he was the youngest general in Europe.  A guy gets a reputation for achievements like this.

Spain is like most European countries in the 1930s....it's undergoing a change to a socialist secular republic. Some people are happy.  Some people are unhappy.

There's an election in 1936 and the conservative political side of Spain loses (marginal loss).  The reaction by the military is that it's time to run up a coup.  There's a group of military leaders involved and Franco appears to be simply following the group....not leading it.  In the weeks that followed....a number of the other generals die....Franco survives (for whatever amount of luck one can imagine).

Franco now becomes the one and only leader of this coup group.  Outside support?  Well, this gets dragged up an awful lot.  The Italians and Germans are focused on helping Franco survive. 

The Republic or leftist crowd (legally voted upon by the public)?  Supported by groups attached to the Soviet Union, and civilian-type groups in the US. 

A civil war ensues, and because of the assistance of the Italians and Germans.....this war eventually ends.  Franco is the leader of the new republic. Folks argue over the numbers of dead but it's believed that this three-year civil war involved a half-million dead people (to include not only Spaniards, but Soviets, Americans, etc).

Spring of 1939 arrives and Franco announces himself as the head of state and gives himself a title (El Caudillo). At this moment, the three big dictators of Europe are on a pedestal....Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. 

To make the fakeness of a republic work, Franco manages to bring some fascist political groups, a a few traditionalist left political parties, along with a handful of monarchist hyped-up individuals into one central party.  Every other party?  Outlawed.

Death and misery ended?  No.  Historians argue over the next period or era.  Some say around 300,000 and some go up to 450,000....who either died or disappered.  If you opposed Franco, you either left the country or you kept your mouth shut.  There was only one direction forward....the Franco-way.  Work-camps were created, and in some ways....concentration camps were developed as part of the Franco solution.

In today's history commentary....few mention it....but Franco was pro-Hitler throughout WW II and there was absolutely no neutrality going on.  No one got punished after the war oddly enough for their behavior.

After WW II?  Spain was simply drifting around.  It wasn't a place that you'd go to vacation, and business relationships were non-existent.  As you get to the mid-1950s to mid-1960s....Spain goes through a clean-up period.  Repression is downgraded.  The economy starts to recover from decades of Franco management. 

In the early 1970s, Franco restores the monarchy system and bring Kng Carlos I into the picture.  A new constitution is written.  Franco dies in 1975 and gets a head of state funeral.

Today?  You can condemn Franco.  You can write historical pieces over the negative period.  You can curse him in public, if you desire. 

A number of Spaniards go back to the 1936 period and discuss that election.  If Franco hadn't gotten into the coup....if they'd avoided the connection to the Nazis in 1939....if Spain had emerged out of the 1945 period with great economic factors working for them.  On and on.

Presently, the Madrid federal leadership are walking upon a fragile surface.  If they trigger any kind of martial law or arrest members of the movement of the Catalonia exit group....they will be identified as 'Franco-supporters', and that only hurts the situation more.

So, when you hear the whole debate over Catalonia and hear the word 'Franco' uttered....there's a reason why people have a fear over where this whole thing might go.