đ Share this article Spain's Overly Positive Perception of Franco's Regime: Revisiting the Atrocities At first glance, not many expected that Francisco Franco would become a authoritarian ruler able to imposing a brutal dictatorship over four decades. He was a small-statured, high-pitched army officer with a poor understanding of civilian affairs and little personal appeal. But he achieved just that, prior to dying of natural causes in a Madrid hospital, half a century ago this week. The Warning of Outward Mediocrity Nowadays, Franco stands as a caution that outward mediocrity is not an obstacle to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a slippery, clever operator. His drive was fueled by an unyielding determination, a glib indifference to violence and limitless self-esteem. His admirers and defenders â among them on the newly buoyant far right in Spain, the US and the UK â still claim Franco was never really a autocrat, but instead a beloved saviour from Marxism. This is incorrect, but dictators do not emerge from nowhere. "Some important part of every society is made up of people who desire authoritarian rule," political thinker from France Jean-François Revel noted the following year Franco's death: "to wield it personally or â far more puzzlingly â to yield to it." He thought the identical thing: what people really wanted was to experience being ruled. The Reality of Brutality and Suppression Naturally, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no necessity for his 1936 coup against an elected leftwing government, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the subsequent civil conflict. He would not have executed 20,000 individuals afterwards. He seized control in a Spain still slumped in post-empire lethargy â a powerful realm having disappeared the century before. Franco wanted to make Spain great again. He blamed foreigners. They were stealing Spainâs money, conspiring against it as part of a Marxist-Jewish-masonic plot, or corrupting local thoughts with external ideologies: democratic systems, socialism, Marxist doctrine, and his bizarre bugbear, Freemasonry. A Calculated, Brutal Conflict The conflict was deliberately slow and brutal in occupied areas, alongside a bloody purging of opponents in an attempt to "cleanse" this contaminated Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of allegedly "masculine" men and subservient women, whose bodily autonomy, offspring, employment and possessions were reduced, shelved, or handed over to male relatives. Following a punitive win, Franco confined the nation into a straitjacket of autarky and discarded the key. Autarky was embraced. International investment and products were shunned. "We possess all necessities," he said. Famine and Pariah Status But he was wrong. The direct outcome was famine, with people dying on city streets in 1940 and 1945. As he drove on a triumphal journey through the towns of JaĂ©n and MĂĄlaga, people begged at his car window. "Señor Franco, for Godâs sake, a piece of bread," they said. Even Nazi officials in Spain, his supporters, complained that a impressive exterior hid the horrific reality. By backing Hitler and Mussolini during the second world war, Franco turned Spain into a pariah state, but he declined to relinquish power afterwards. The Spanish people descended deeper into suffering. Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation Franco's conviction that he was both divinely chosen and always right meant he demanded a permanent rule in charge. A UK diplomat complained that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", unaware of his own incompetence. Fortune, and a lack of any definable ideology, saved him. When the cold war started, he polished his anti-communist credentials and the United States rehabilitated him. Consequently, a disastrous economy was eventually rescued and compelled to liberalize by the US and the International Monetary Fund. During the sixties, Spain was drawn into a southern European economic boom that had begun earlier in neighboring countries. Abruptly, visitors were flocking to Spanish beaches at Benidorm or on the Costa del Sol. Many Spaniards still could not find work, but the remittances after emigrating to northern Europe also provided relief. State Terror and Historical Amnesia Franco quietly dropped his most foolish concepts â from founding a new empire to producing artificial fuel with a "miraculous" formula â but never abandoned his primary goal of making Spaniards docile, compliant and disengaged. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 coup onwards, implemented a strict, Goebbels-inspired media regulation, and made sure generations of Spaniards were schooled in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing Francoist curriculum. As late as the 1970s, independent political parties, democratic voting and trade unions remained prohibited. Franco also infantilised Spaniards, deeming them incapable of governing themselves. The scariest part of his heritage was that so many believed him. Reversion to Brutality and Ancient Methods Once that fear-based agreement finally began to fall apart during the final years of his rule, he defaulted back to violent domination. Aggressive law enforcement, abuse, execution teams and even that ancient killing method, the garrote, reappeared. This method saw a iron band placed around a condemned personâs neck and tightened until it snapped their spine or cut off their air supply; it was being used by a European administration on its own citizens, in 1974. Fear and the Transition to Democracy Nevertheless, the scholar Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco chronicler, recalls experiencing sorrow as a boy, upon hearing the news that Franco had passed away: "The sadness of that 12-year-old boy was felt at the time by millions of Spaniards, who thought that the man who had just died had been the best possible solution for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "That is what they said at school, in the press, on the television ⊠" The main feeling in reaction to Franco's demise was fear. After all, what occurs after the man at the center of a decades-long dictatorship passes away? Authority was transferred to the young king Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that culminated in a referendum on the founding document that remains in effect. The country continues as a dynamic, disputatious democracy. Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage Inspiring accounts arose to account for this. From the leftist perspective, it was the result of pressure from courageous demonstrators, youth and workers who clashed repeatedly with security forces. From the conservative view, it was a indication of establishment wisdom. For his supporters, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it constitutes a part of the dictatorâs legacy. And here rests a problem. In a Madrid printing store where I produced drafts of my recent book on the dictator, the leader, the proprietor kept maintaining that his father stated he had prospered under Franco. His father remembered, naturally, only the economic boom of the sixties. The Peril of Unawareness During the promotion of the Spanish edition of the book, I have also realised that the issues outlined by MarĂa RamĂrez about growing up surrounded by silence about the dictatorship are still present. College attendees inform me that their secondary educators were still skirting around the topic recently. As a parent of Spanish youth, that is a major concern. Lack of knowledge is dangerous. It is not surprising that almost one in five young people believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The sole method to change that is to end the quiet and educate the new generation what Francoism was truly like.