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Francisco Paulino
Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde (pron.
IPA :
[fran'θisko 'franko];
December
4, 1892
– November
20 (or possibly November
19 [*])
1975),
abbreviated Francisco Franco y Bahamonde and sometimes known as Generalísimo
Francisco Franco, was the Head
of State of Spain
in parts of the country from 1936
and in its entirety from 1939
until his death in 1975.
He presided over the authoritarian
government of the Spanish
State following victory in the Spanish
Civil War. From 1947,
he was de facto regent
of Spain. During his rule he was known officially as por la gracia de
Dios, Caudillo
de España y de la Cruzada, or "by the grace of God, the
Leader of Spain and of the Crusade."
Early life
Franco was born in Ferrol,
Galicia,
Spain. His
father Nicolas Franco Salgado-Araujo was a Navy
accounting officer. His mother Pilar Bahamonde Pardo de Andrade
also came from a family with naval tradition. He was sibling to Nicolás
Franco Bahamonde, navy officer and diplomat; a sister, Pilar
Franco Bahamonde, the latter a well-known socialite; and another
brother, Ramón
Franco, a pioneer aviator who was hated by many of Franco's supporters.
His hometown was
officially known as El Ferrol del Caudillo from 1938
to 1982.
During his youth he suffered at the hands of his aggressive, alcoholic
father, and it is argued by many that these experiences in his early years
are what set him on the road to the murders and other atrocities he
committed in later life.
Franco was to follow his
father into the navy, but entry into the Naval Academy was closed from 1906
to 1913. To
his father's chagrin, he decided to join the army. In 1907,
he entered the Infantry Academy in Toledo,
where he graduated in 1910.
He was commissioned as a second
lieutenant.
Two years later, he
obtained a commission to Morocco.
Spanish efforts to physically occupy their new African
protectorate
provoked a long protracted war (from 1909
to 1927) with
native Moroccans. Tactics at the time resulted in heavy losses among
Spanish military
officers, but also gave the chance of earning promotion through merit.
This explains the saying that officers would get either la caja o la
faja (a coffin or a general's sash).
Franco soon gained a
reputation as a good officer. He joined the newly formed regulares
colonial
native troops with Spanish officials, which acted as shock
troops.
In 1916,
at the age of 23 and already a captain,
he was badly wounded in a skirmish
at El
Biutz. This action marked him permanently in the eyes of the native
troops as a man of baraka
(good luck). He was also proposed unsuccessfully for Spain's highest honor
for gallantry, the coveted Cruz
Laureada de San Fernando. Instead, he was promoted to major
(comandante), becoming the youngest staff
officer in the Spanish Army.
From 1917
to 1920 he
was posted on the Spanish mainland. That last year, Lieutenant Colonel José
Millán Astray, a histrionic
but charismatic
officer, founded the Legión
Extranjera, along similar lines to the French
Foreign Legion. Franco became the Legión's second-in-command
and returned to Africa.
In summer 1921,
the overextended Spanish army suffered (July
24) a crushing
defeat at Annual
at the hands of the Rif
tribes led by the Abd
el-Krim brothers. The Legión symbolically, if not materially,
saved the Spanish enclave of Melilla
after a gruelling three-day forced march led by Franco. In 1923,
already a lieutenant
colonel, he was made commander of the Legión.
The same year he married
María del Carmen
Polo y Martínez Valdés and they had one child, a daughter, María
del Carmen, born in 1926.
As a special mark of honour, his best
man (padrino) at the wedding was King Alfonso
XIII, a fact which would mark him, during the Republic
as a monarchical officer.
Promoted to colonel,
Franco led the first wave of troops ashore at Alhucemas
in 1925. This landing in the heartland of Abd el-Krim's tribe, combined
with the French invasion from the south, spelled the beginning of the end
for the shortlived Republic
of the Rif.
Becoming the youngest general
in Spain in 1926,
Franco was appointed in 1928
director of the newly created Joint Military Academy in Zaragoza,
a common college for all Army cadets.
During the Second
Spanish Republic
At the fall of the
monarchy in 1931,
in keeping with his prior apolitical record, he did not take any
remarkable attitude. But the closing of the Academy in June by then War
Minister Manuel
Azaña provoked the first clash with the Republic. Azaña
found Franco's farewell speech to the cadets [1]
insulting, resulting in Franco being without a post for six months, and
under surveillance.
On February
5, 1932
he was given a command in A
Coruña. Franco avoided being involved in Jose
Sanjurjo's attempted coup that year. As a side result of Azaña's
military reform, in January 1933
Franco was relegated from the first to the 24th in the list of Brigadiers;
conversely, the same year (February
17), he was given the military command of the Balearic
Islands—a post above his grade.
The Asturias Uprising
On October 1933,
new elections were held, which resulted in a center-right majority. In
opposition to this government, a revolutionary
movement broke out October
5, 1934.
This attempt was rapidly quelled in most of the country, but gained a
stronghold in Asturias,
with the support of the miners'
unions. Franco, already general of a Division and assessor to the war
minister, was put in command of the operations directed to suppress the
insurgency. The forces of the Army in Africa were to carry the brunt of
the operations, with General Eduardo
López Ochoa as commander in the field. After two weeks of heavy
fighting (and a death toll estimated between 1,200 and 2,000), the
rebellion was suppressed.
The uprising and, in general, the events that led over the next two years
to the civil war, are still under heavy debate (between, for example, Enrique
Moradiellos and Pio
Moa: see [2],
[3],
or [4]).
Nonetheless, it is universally agreed that the insurgency in Asturias
sharpened the antagonism between left and right. Franco and Lopez Ochoa—who
up to that moment was seen as a left-leaning officer—were marked by
the left as enemies. Lopez Ochoa was persecuted, jailed, and finally
killed at the start of the war.
Some time after these
events, Franco was briefly commander-in-chief of the Army of Africa (from February
15, 1935
onwards), and from May
19, 1935
on, Chief
of the General Staff, the top military post in Spain.
The government of the
Popular Front
After the ruling
coalition collapsed amid corruption scandals (the estraperlo
case), new elections were scheduled. Two wide coalitions formed: the Popular
Front on the left, from Republicans to the Communists, and the Frente
Nacional, on the right, from the centre radicals
to the conservative Carlists.
On February
16, 1936,
the left won by a narrow margin[5].
The days after were marked by near chaotic circumstances. Franco lobbied
unsuccessfully to have a state of emergency declared, with the stated
purpose to quell the disturbances and allow an orderly vote recount.
Instead, Franco was sent (February
23) as military commander of the Canary
Islands, a distant place with few troops under his command.
Meanwhile, a conspiracy
led by Emilio
Mola was taking shape. Franco was contacted, although he did not
endorse the coup but maintained an ambiguous attitude almost up to July.
Yet on June
23, 1936,
he wrote to the head of the government, Casares
Quiroga, offering to quell the discontent in the army, but the
government answer was never satisfactory to him. In July, after the middle
classes and the centre-right joined the rebellion, the situation reached a
point of no return and, as presented to Franco by Mola, the coup was
unavoidable and he had to choose a side. He decided to join the rebels and
was given the task of commanding the African Army. A private airplane (the
Dragon Rapide) was chartered in England July
11 to bring him to Africa.
The assassination of the
right-wing opposition leader José
Calvo Sotelo by government police troops (quite possibly acting on
their own: see José
Castillo (Spanish Civil War)) triggered the uprising. On July
17 the African Army rebelled, detaining their commanders. On July
18 Franco published a manifesto [6]
and left for Africa, where he arrived the next day to take command.
A week later, the rebels,
who soon came to be known as the Nacionales (literally Nationals, but
almost always referred to in English as Nationalists), controlled only a
third of Spain, and most navy
units remained under control of the opposition Republican forces, which
left Franco isolated. The coup had failed, but the Spanish
Civil War had begun.
Franco during the War
The first months
The first days of the
rebellion, they were marked with the need of securing the control over the
Protectorate.
On one side, Franco managed to win the support of the natives and their (nominal)
authorities. On the other to insure his control over the army. This led to
the execution of some senior officers loyal to the republic (one of them
his own first cousin) [7].
Franco had to face the problem of how to move his troops to the Iberian
Peninsula, because most units of the Navy had remained in control of
the republic and were blocking the Strait
of Gibraltar. From the July
20 onward he was able, with a small group of aeroplanes, to initiate
an air bridge to Seville,
where his troops helped to insure the rebel control of the city. Through
representatives, he started to negotiate with the United
Kingdom, Germany
and Italy
for military support, and above all for more aeroplanes. Negotiations were
successful with the last two on July
25, and aeroplanes began to arrive in Tetouan
on August
2. August
5, with this fresh air support, he was able to break the blockade and
send a ship convoy with some 2,000 soldiers.
In early August, the
situation in western Andalusia
was stable enough to allow him to organize a column (some 15,000 men at
its height), under the command of then Lieutenant-Colonel Juan
Yagüe, which would march through Extremadura
towards Madrid.
August
11, Mérida
was taken, and August
15 Badajoz,
thus joining both nationalist-controlled areas. On September
21, with the head of the column at the town of Maqueda
(some 80 km away from Madrid), Franco ordered a detour to free the
besieged garrison at the Alcázar
of Toledo,
which was achieved September
27. This decision was controversial even then, but resulted in an
important propaganda success, both for the nationalist party and for
Franco himself.
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