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Wikipedia
Rise to power
The designated leader of
the uprising, Gen. José
Sanjurjo had died on July
20 in an air crash. The nationalist leaders managed to overcome this
through regional commands: (Mola
in the North, Queipo
in Andalusia,
Franco with an independent command and Cabanellas
in Aragon),
and a coordinating junta
nominally led by the last, as the most senior general. On September
21, it was decided that Franco was to be commander-in-chief, and September
28, after some discussion, also head of government. On October
1, 1936
he was publicly proclaimed as Generalissimo of the Nationalist army
and Jefe del Estado (Head
of State).
Military command
From that time until the
end of the war, Franco personally guided military operations. After the
failure to take Madrid
in November 1936,
Franco settled to a piecemeal approach to winning the war, rather than
bold maneuvering. As with his decision to relieve the garrison at Toledo,
this approach has been subject of some debate; some of his decisions, such
as in June 1938
when he preferred to head for Valencia
instead of Catalonia,
remain particularly controversial.
His army was supported by
troops from Nazi
Germany (the Condor
Legion) and, above all, Fascist
Italy (Corpo
Truppe Volontarie), but the degree of influence of both powers on
Franco's direction of war seems to have been very limited. António
de Oliveira Salazar's Portugal
also openly assisted the Nationalists from the start.
Political command
He managed to fuse the ideologically
incompatible national-syndicalist Falange
("phalanx",
a far-right
Spanish political
party with ideology similar to that of Mussolini's
movement) and the Carlist
monarchist parties under his rule.
From early 1937
every death sentence had to be signed (or acknowledged) by Franco.
The end of the war
On March
4, 1939
an uprising broke out within the Republican camp, claiming to forestall an
intended Communist coup by prime minister Juan Negrín. Led by Colonel Segismundo
Casado and Julián
Besteiro, the rebels gained control over Madrid.
They tried to negotiate a settlement with Franco, who refused anything but
unconditional
surrender. They gave way; Madrid was occupied on March
27, and the republic fell. The war officially ended on April
1, 1939.
During the 1940s, some guerrilla
resistance to Franco was to be found in isolated rural areas such as the Val
d'Aran in Catalonia.
Spain under Franco
Spain was bitterly
divided and economically ruined as a result of the civil war.
After the war a very
harsh repression began, with hundreds of thousands of summary executions,
an unknown number of political prisoners and thousands of people in exile,
largely in France and Latin America. The 1940 shooting of the president of
the Catalan
government, Lluís
Companys, was one of the most notable cases of this early repression,
while the major groups targeted were real and suspected leftists,
ranging from the moderate, democratic left to Communists
and Anarchists,
the Spanish intelligentsia,
atheists
and military and government figures that had remained loyal to the Madrid
government during the war. The bloodshed in Spain did not end with the
cessation of hostilities, many political prisoners suffered execution by
the firing squad, under the accusation of treason.
World War II
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For more details
on this topic, see Spain
in World War II.
In September 1939, World
War II broke out in Europe, and although Adolf
Hitler met Franco in Hendaye,
France (October
23, 1940),
to discuss Spanish entry on the side of the Axis,
Franco's demands (food, military equipment, Gibraltar,
French
North Africa, etc.) proved too much and no agreement was reached.
Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German mining
rights in Spain. Some historians argue that Franco made demands that he
knew Hitler would not accede to in order to stay out of the war. Other
historians argue that he simply had nothing to offer the Germans. After
the collapse of France in June 1940, Spain adopted a pro-Axis
non-belligerency stance (for example, he offered Spanish naval facilities
to German ships) until returning to complete neutrality in 1943 when the
tide of the war had turned decisively against Germany. Some volunteer
Spanish troops (the División
Azul, or "Blue Division")—not given official state
sanction by Franco—went to fight on the Eastern
Front under German command. During the war Franco's Spain also proved
to be an escape way for several thousands European Jews fleeing
deportation from occupied France to concentration camps. Spanish diplomats
extended their protection to Sephardi Jews.
Post-War
With the end of World War
II, Franco and Spain were forced to suffer the economic consequences of
the isolation imposed on it by nations such as the United Kingdom and the
United States. This situation ended in part when, due to Spain's strategic
location in light of Cold
War tensions, the United
States entered into a trade and military alliance with Spain. This
historic alliance commenced with U.S. President Eisenhower's
visit in 1953
which resulted in the Pact
of Madrid. This launched the so-called "Spanish
Miracle," which developed Spain from autarky
into capitalism.
Spain was admitted in the United
Nations in 1955.
In spite of this opening, Franco almost never left Spain once in power.
Lacking any strong
ideology, Franco initially sought support from National
syndicalism (nacionalsindicalismo) and the Roman
Catholic Church (nacionalcatolicismo). His coalition-ruling
single party, the Movimiento
Nacional, was so heterogeneous as to barely qualify as a party at all,
and certainly not an ideological monolith like the Fascio di Combattimento
(Fascist
Party) or the ruling block of Antonio
Salazar. His Spanish State was chiefly a conservative—even
traditionalist—rightist regime, with emphasis on order and stability,
rather than a definite political vision.
In 1947
Franco proclaimed Spain a monarchy,
but did not designate a monarch. This gesture was largely done to appease
monarchist factions within the Movimiento. Although a self-proclaimed
monarchist himself, Franco had no particular desire for a king. As such,
he left the throne vacant, with himself as de facto regent.
He wore the uniform of a captain general (a rank traditionally reserved
for the King), resided in the Pardo Palace, appropriated the kingly
privilege of walking beneath a canopy,
and his portrait appeared on most Spanish coins. Indeed, although his
formal titles were Jefe del Estado (Chief of State) and Generalísimo
de los Ejércitos Españoles (Generalissimo of the Spanish Armed
Forces). He had originally intended any government that succeeded him to
be much more authoritarian than the previous monarchy. This is indicated
in his use of "by
the grace of God" in his official title. It is a technical, legal
phrase which indicates sovereign dignity in absolute
monarchies, and is only used by monarchs.
During his rule
non-government trade
unions and all political opponents across the political
spectrum, from communist
and anarchist
organizations to liberal
democrats and Catalan
or Basque
nationalists, were suppressed. The only legal "trade union" was
the government-run Sindicato
Vertical.
In order to build a
uniform Spanish nation, the public usage of languages other than Spanish
(especially Catalan,
Galician
and Basque
languages) was strongly repressed. Language
politics in Francoist Spain stated that all government, notarial,
legal and commercial documents were drawn up exclusively in Spanish and
any written in other languages were deemed null and void. The usage of
other than Spanish languages was banned on road and shop signs,
advertising and in general all exterior images of the country.
All cultural activities
were subject to censorship,
and many were plainly forbidden on various, many times spurious, grounds (political
or moral). This cultural policy relaxed with time, most notably after
1960.
The enforcement by public
authorities of strict Catholic
social mores
was a stated intent of the regime, mainly by using a law (the Ley de
Vagos y Maleantes, Vagancy Act) enacted by Azaña
[8].
The remaining nomads of Spain (Gitanos
and Mercheros
like El
Lute) were especially affected.
In 1954,
homosexuality
and prostitution
were, through this law, made criminal offenses. [9].
Its application was inconsistent.
In every town there was a
constant presence of Guardia
Civil, a military police force, who patrolled in pairs with submachine
guns, and functioned as his chief means of control. He was constantly
obsessed with a Masonic
conspiracy. In popular imagination, he is often remembered as in the black
and white images of No-Do
newsreels,
inaugurating a reservoir,
hence his nickname Paco Ranas (Paco—a familiar form of
Francisco—"the Frog"), or catching huge fish from the Azor
yacht during his holidays.
Famous quote: "Our
regime is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections."
In 1968,
due to the United Nations' pressure on Spain, Franco granted Equatorial
Guinea its independence.
In 1969
he designated Prince Juan
Carlos de Borbón with the new title of Prince of Spain as his
successor. This came as a surprise for the Carlist
pretender to the throne, as well as for Juan Carlos's father, Don
Juan, the Count of Barcelona, who technically had a superior right to
the throne. By 1973
Franco had given up the function of prime
minister (Presidente del Gobierno), remaining only as head of
the country and as commander in chief of the military forces. As his final
years progressed tension within the various factions of the Movimiento
would consume Spanish political life, as varying groups jockeyed for
position to control the country's future.
^
Franco died on November
20, 1975,
at the age of 82—the same date as José
Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange.
It is suspected that the doctors were ordered to keep him barely alive
by artificial means until that symbolic date. The historian, Ricardo de
la Cierva, says that on the 19th around 6 pm he was told that Franco had
already died. Franco is buried at Santa
Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, a site built by forced prisoners of
the Spanish Civil War as the tomb for unknown soldiers dead during war.
Spain after Franco
Franco's successor as
head of state was the current Spanish monarch, Juan
Carlos. Though much beloved by Franco, the King held liberal political
views which earned him suspicion among conservatives who hoped he would
continue Franco's policies. Instead, Juan Carlos would proceed to restore
democracy in the nation, and help crush an attempted
military coup in 1981.
Since Franco's death,
almost all the placenames named
after him (most Spanish towns had a calle del Generalísimo)
have been changed. This holds particularly true in the regions ruled by
parties heir to the Republican side, while in other regions of central
Spain rulers have preferred not to change such placenames, arguing they
would rather not stir the past. Most statues or monuments of him
have also been removed, and, in the capital, Madrid, the last one standing
was removed in March 2005.
He was declared
a saint by Pope Gregory XVII (Clemente
Domínguez y Gómez) of the Palmarian
Catholic Church, a right-wing Catholic mysticalist sect
largely based in Spain. Franco's canonization is not recognized by the
mainstream Roman
Catholic Church.
