Franco was a Spanish General stationed in Spanish West Africa, a fascist who came home, started a military coup that overthrew the newly elected Republican government, and re-established the Spanish Bourbon monarchy which had been deposed by election by the Republicans, and kicked off the Spanish Civil War. Like his buddies Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany, he brought order to the country torn by civil war, stabilized a sinking economy, made the trains run on time… etc., but not much else.
He suspended elections for more than a decade, went after ethnic groups whom he considered foreign and he felt wouldn’t assimilate to his satisfaction—and therefore considered by him to be dangerous to Spanish culture and his rule. Groups such as the Basques. He shot republicans and communists in the streets without trial, imprisoned and exiled tens of thousands of Spaniards, kicked out the liberal Jesuits (too many had supported the wrong side in the civil war) and replaced them with Dominicans—the Catholic order of priests who prosecuted the Spanish Inquisition under Tomas de Torquemada from the 15th century onward—and ramped up the Inquisition once again, with anti-royalists, pro republicans as the target du jour. The persecutions and rigged elections finally came to an end when Franco died around 1975 and Prince Juan Carlos took over soon after, instituted a new constitution, then abdicated to the new freely elected president.
Before Franco died, a Basque could be sent to prison for speaking his local tongue in public. Carlos stopped all that and Basque was allowed to be taught again in Basque schools. People who had been imprisoned since the ‘30s for their political beliefs were finally released in the late 1970’s. Carlos took a back seat to the newly elected president and the senate and Spain became a democratic constitutional monarchy like Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, etc.
You should read this stuff. It leads to a lot of places and became an important moment in American history. Many American volunteers, college kids, died fighting to defend the Republic against Franco and Fascism. The Lincoln Brigade, the Washington brigade, were all college kids who, without any previous training and no official support, went to Spain to fight. Hemingway, Orwell and many other famous journalists and authors were on the front lines and wrote about it all.
Later, in the early 1950’s, a lot of these guys came under the eyes of the FBI and thus the House Un-American Activities Committee (which still exists) because they’d fought for the Republican side, which was populated by many Communists brigades and were supported materially by the Soviet Union—just as Franco was supported by Nazi Germany. Many of these guys lost their careers and threatened with prison terms in what is known today as the Communist Witch Hunt under HUAC, simply because they fought on the Republican side in the civil war and believed in democracy for Spain.
What do you think? Was Franco good for Spain or not?
