Real Dictators - Franco Part 5: Life After a Dictator

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

The horrors of the past are buried. After 20 years in power, Franco embraces capitalism and declares himself a moderniser. Spain becomes a leading holiday destination. Later, Franco plans his own succession. The ailing Generalissimo headhunts a dashing young heir. But it remains to be seen whether this successor will keep to Franco’s script. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's 1959. It's been 20 years since Francisco Franco came to power in Spain, at the end of the country's bloody civil war. Now, with new reforms, the Spanish economy is about to achieve liftoff. This period of rapid growth will be known as El Milagro Español, the Spanish Miracle. It will transform the living

standards of millions and allow General Franco to shore up his position at the center of Spanish politics. But Franco can't live forever. He can't rule Spain from beyond the grave. Or can he? Just how firm his grip on power really is remains to be seen. This is the final part of the Francisco Franco story. And this is Real Dictators. By the late 1950s, so much has changed since Franco came to power, and at the same time, so little. The most intense period of Francoist repression, the White Terror, has ended. Though state-sponsored violence is by no means a thing of the past.

Since the end of World War II, Franco has sought to tone down the fascist aesthetics of his regime. Outwardly, he's been at pains to stress that opposition to communism is his animating principle. This rebranding exercise has, at a superficial level, been largely successful. Despite the dictatorship, Spain is now a firm ally of the United States in the Cold War and a member of the United Nations. In geopolitics, Spain and its dictator are secure. But on the domestic front, Franco knows he can't afford to take his power for granted. As a new decade beckons, many countries in

the West are on the cusp of social and cultural revolution. The austerity of the 1950s is about to give way to the optimistic and progressive atmosphere of the swinging 60s. This phenomenon will largely fail to wash up on Spain's shores, but still, after 20 years of stifling dictatorship, Franco knows he needs to make a fresh pitch to the Spanish people, to lay the groundwork for the next two decades. Franco claims to have saved Spain from the left during the Spanish Civil War. Now he claims to offer three very simple, very valuable things. Three gifts that any nation would be foolish to turn down. Stability, order, and prosperity.

The legitimizing argument changes. It's no longer the movement to save Spain. It's stability and order, peace and order, economic prosperity. And the second main legitimizing argument then becomes, I, Franco, am what stops Spain from yet again breaking out in civil war. The idea that Franco presented of himself was of a dictator who is strict but fair, who rules over a beautiful and honorable and brave nation that, however, has a tendency to break out into fratricidal violence, which is not really ripe or ready for democracy because that doesn't really

jive with Spanish national character, with Spanish traditions. So Franco was kind of presenting himself as the main reason why Spain did not yet again break out in civil war. the main reason why Spain did not yet again break out in civil war. For 13 years, Spain has been ravaged by a succession of famines, known as the Years of Hunger. Franco has worked tirelessly to stamp out the embers of Spanish republicanism. He knows he needs to provide for the people if he's going to stop resistance movements spreading once again. The level of hunger and starvation, I mean, people are living off scraps. people, if he's going to stop resistance movements spreading once again.

The level of hunger and starvation, I mean, people are living off scraps. I mean, there are people living out of trash cans. It is really appalling, the situation for the defeated republic. This coincides, of course, with the kind of luxury on the part of the winners. Franco's solution to Spain's woes is to bring free market capitalists into his government. Modernizing reforms are introduced, which rapidly revive the struggling Spanish economy. How long this boom will last remains to be seen, but right now, aided by growing foreign investment and the rise of international tourism, Spain is entering a new era of prosperity.

The rapid economic growth leads some to label Franco as Spain's great modernizer. So one of the ways in which Franco tried to, or his supporters reinvented him and rebuilt his reputation came in 1964 when the regime celebrated 25 years of peace. And this included issuing stamps with 25 years of peace on it. It also had a series of exhibitions, including one in the north of Madrid in the capital of Spain in June 1964. And we can see in the newspaper reports about this exhibition, just the kind of things that Franco and his regime were trying to celebrate. They said that in 1936, 300 Spaniards died from cold and hunger. And in 1963, none died from cold or hunger at all.

Completely obliterating what happened in the 1940s, over 200,000 people killed. So in 1964, they're saying that in the last 30 years since 1934, life expectancy had increased from 50 to 72. Also talking about the large numbers of people visiting Spain each year and how it was a normal country. So basically what Franco was trying to do and his regime was trying to do was to suggest that in the first place with these tourists coming, Spain wasn't a fascist regime, it wasn't an unusual regime, it was a perfectly normal member of world society. And also that Spanish society wasn't possessed or subject to mass repression and suffering, rather the complete opposite. It was peace, stability and improving living standards.

The pace of economic growth is undoubtedly extraordinary. Spain transitions from being a largely agricultural society into a modern industrial one in just a matter of years. The new technocratic ministers in the government champion huge state investment in industry. The Barcelona carmaker SEAT is one of the biggest beneficiaries. The number of private vehicles on Spanish roads rises from just 72,000 in 1946 to over 1 million 20 years later. Franco takes the credit for this boom.

But some historians believe Spain's rapid growth happens in spite of El Codillo, not because of him. Franco wants Spain to change, but only to the extent that it bolsters his own position. If the country modernizes too much or too quickly, he could find himself exposed. Spain modernized in spite of Franco. Franco was afraid that any change

will undermine his power. So everything he did, he went extremely slow because he was afraid that he did something while then he may lose power. Franco was bonded by Nolo. So he could do whatever he wanted legally. So he basically projected into Spanish society all the frustrations and the human and intellectual

shortcomings that he had. All dictators are limited because what the dictator does is to fit what is very complex, which is a society, to the limits of their brains. So all dictators are people who are very, very limited. Because any person who is open-minded understands that we are just a small part of something which is far wider than ourselves, which is the human experience, and this is the society in which we live. Franco has, to a degree, opened up Spain's economy. But he still expects citizens to strictly adhere to his personal vision of the nation. He continues to repress the nation's diversity. He promotes the region of Castile, Spain's central belt, as the beating heart and the historic core of the country.

He promotes Castilian traditions like bullfighting over regional cultures. Franco demands the use of Castilian Spanish over other languages such as Catalan, Galician and Basque. The use of any language other than Spanish is forbidden in schools, in advertising and on road and shop signs. The Catholic Church continues to reclaim its traditional privileges. Civil servants have to be Catholic, and some jobs even require a good behaviour statement from a priest. Divorce is forbidden, along with contraceptives and abortion. Women

are banned from becoming judges or testifying in trials. They cannot become university professors. Until the 1970s, a woman cannot open a bank account in Spain without having it co-signed by her father or husband. Meanwhile, censors continue to heavily redact foreign art, books, and films. Passages that might be seen as promoting liberalism within Spain are removed or rephrased. Some demonstrations against the Francoist regime do take place in the 1960s and early 1970s.

But on the whole, there is little resistance. The real massive repression is over by 1943. You could almost say there wasn't anyone left to kill. The repression has done its work. The repression is an investment in terror. And that investment goes on bringing returns right up to 1975. People are terrified. This is a regime of terror.

It also becomes a regime of brainwashing. So on the basis of terror, you also have a regime which through its control of the education system and its control of the media, radio is very important at this time, the press obviously, and they're very tightly controlled, iron censorship. It is deeply repressive. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

By the 1960s, Francisco Franco is into his eighth decade. Once again, in his twilight years, he changes masks. He assumes the role of benign elder statesman. He's pictured wearing normal suits rather than his military uniform. In official pictures he smiles for the camera. In 1966 he appears on the cover of Time magazine, looking more like a kindly old man than a military strongman. With his health rapidly declining, Franco begins to retreat from daily political affairs, franco begins to retreat from daily political affairs preferring to hunt and fish instead

but el cordillo is far from the kindly grandfather he portrays himself to be he continues to personally sign death warrants right up until the final months of his life he ignores international campaigns demanding he put a stop to miscarriages of justice and flagrant human rights abuses. Some perceived enemies of the government continue to be blindfolded and garroted to death by means of punishment for their subversion. In September 1975, just two months before his death, Franco approves the execution of five members of various resistance groups. Large protests break out across Europe. They have no effect. In the end, the only thing that can stop Franco is his own mortality.

On October 1st, 1975, the frail and ailing Codillo delivers a speech on the balcony of the Royal Palace in Madrid. It will be his final public appearance. Soon after, suffering from Parkinson's disease and succumbing to heart failure, Franco slips into a coma and is put on life support. Doctors monitor his feeble life signs Family members huddle around him weeping and praying for his revival It's a far cry from the desperate final moments suffered by his enemies Or the humiliating ends of other right-wing dictators Benito Mussolini was shot and strung up by his ankles. Crowds of people gathered to abuse his lifeless body before it was thrown into an unmarked grave. Yet here lies Spain's

Caudillo, receiving the best medical care available, surrounded by loved ones. On November 20, 1975, Francisco Franco, one of the longest reigning dictators in European history, dies at the age of 82. He dies believing that he was the chosen one, not a destroyer but a savior. For 36 years, Franco has been the face of Spain, the single most powerful and influential member of society. The country has been bent to his vision, his version of history for decades. Spaniards now are left with the question, what next?

He has kept Spaniards in fear of themselves, in fear of another civil war, in fear of being unable to live together. Once he was removed, the guardian of that fear was gone. Spaniards have to confront the future. The dictatorship offers only violence, more repression, to the growing diversity of opinions in society. The only solution to that riddle, to that inheritance of Francoism, was the democratic formula. In the aftermath of Franco's death, it becomes clear what exactly has been keeping him in office.

He terrorized his people, and as a result they feared him. But in a more tangible sense, much of Franco's practical power has come from a handful of laws he'd passed way back in the 1930s and 40s. In 1938, a full year before the end of the Civil War, the Francoist forces declared a new Labour Charter. This decree, on the surface, called for workers' rights, but it also defined strikes as treasonous. This gave Franco a stranglehold over the labour market. After the end of World War II, Franco issued a Charter of Rights. This was a charm offensive, designed to convince the Allies that Spain was becoming a modern, respectable country. But while this charter did ostensibly grant rights to Spanish citizens,

it also reserved the government's right to suspend them. While it supposedly allowed all Spaniards to express their opinions freely, it also denied them the right to attack the basic principles of Franco's rule. In 1945 Franco also passed the Law on Referenda. This stated that big political decisions would be handed over to the Spanish people, with voters invited to participate in a referendum. But who held the sole right to declare a referendum? General Franco.

Who retained the right to appoint all Spanish mayors directly? Franco's government. Who outlawed all political parties except his own? Franco. El Caudillo has ruled Spain as a tyrant, but now after his death it's clear just how much Franco's rule has rested on his force of personality, and his sheer will to centre power on himself. Franco's rule was not based on some ancient constitution. His authority came directly from his victory in the Civil War, and the repression that followed

it. Franco passed laws to shore up his own position. He did not create a deeply embedded system. Francoism won't be easy to undo, but it will be undone, and much quicker than you might imagine. In the 1970s, Spain is still on paper a monarchy. Franco was careful never to officially dissolve the Spanish royal family. He simply left the throne vacant, while he himself ruled as regent for life. Franco never became the king, but he did take on many of the trappings of the monarchy. He lived in the palace. His portrait was featured on Spanish coins. But as his own death approached, Franco saw the surviving Spanish royals as the best hope

for a succession that would protect his version of Spain. So Franco decided to revive the monarchy and appoint a king-in-waiting to take up the reins. Franco hand-picked Prince Juan Carlos, the grandson of the exiled King Alfonso XIII, to be his successor. Franco was convinced that, as the new king, Juan Carlos would maintain at least the basic structure of his regime, and thus the Francoist legacy would live on. After the general's death, most people expected Juan Carlos to continue in this fashion. Outwardly, the young king had seemed to support the dictator. But in a surprise move, Juan Carlos begins a careful transition to democracy.

The new king, and his advisors, can see the writing on the wall. Spain has been subjected to the whims of a single man for 36 years. Aside from the terror and the bloodshed, this is a totally unrealistic way of organising a society in the late 20th century. Franco may have stamped out republicanism across much of the land, but he has by no means succeeded in turning Spain into a monocultural nation. In the Basque region, for example, separatism is still an extremely powerful force.

In Catalonia, people are just as proud, if not prouder, to be Catalan than they've ever been before. Despite Franco's best efforts, Spain still houses a range of cultures and languages and a diversity of political opinion. With the terrifying figure of El Caudillo departed, cultures and languages, and a diversity of political opinion. With the terrifying figure of El Caudillo departed, the fear he inspired in so many is dissipating. Juan Carlos and his Prime Minister, Adolfo Suárez González, begin the process of unpicking

the Francoist state in the courts, using legal means to enact change. Suárez González served under Franco. Juan Carlos was the general's anointed successor. But it's precisely because of their personal closeness to Franco that these two men are so well placed to navigate the political landscape. The army and the church were Franco's key backers, but they trust these two men. Juan Carlos is also careful to ensure he has a popular mandate for change. Under Franco's own law on referenda, Juan Carlos, as head of state, has the right to

arrange popular votes. So he asks the people if they want democratic reform. Around 94% of the respondents say yes. In 1977, the first general election since 1936 is held. One year later, the new Spanish constitution is adopted. Not everyone is on board with the transition to democracy, it must be said. On February 23, 1981, a lieutenant colonel called Antonio Tejero leads 200 members of Spain's National Police, the Civil Guard, into the Parliament building. Tejero represents a section of the military that is furious about the transition to democracy. Years of growth have given way to economic stagnation.

Meanwhile, as Tejero sees it, violent groups across the land are being allowed to run riot. In the Basque region, the terrorist organization ETA regularly bombs and assassinates political targets. In the Palace of the Parliament, Tejero and his men hold parliamentarians and government ministers hostage for 18 hours. The King of Spain takes to the airwaves to denounce the plotters.

By midday on February 24th, the palace has been surrounded by officers loyal to the Crown and to the government. Tejero is arrested. He will serve 15 years in jail. But even after his release, Tejero continues to hold firm to Francoist values. In 2018, he attends the funeral of the General's only daughter, Carmen Franco. Events like this continue to unify those on the Spanish far right, even today, as they come together to honour their fallen. You might wonder how King Juan Carlos is able to achieve such broad support

for his programme of reform. Well, the transition to democracy in the 1970s largely rests on one particular policy. Elected leaders of Spain, whomever they may be, must ensure that those who supported Franco in the past are not prosecuted in the present. One of the basic agreements that made this transition possible was embodied in this amnesty law.

And that was the idea that for Spain to be able to move forward, it's best if we leave the past alone. That did not mean the past could not be investigated or narrated or be the subject of feature films or novels and all that. What it did mean, though, was that people's political past could not be brought up as artillery in political debate, so that it was kind of considered not done for, let's say, the leader of the Socialist Party to, in Parliament, address his opponent on the right and accuse him or her of being just another Francoist. So that kind of invocation of the past, of people's personal past and their past affiliations, as a political argument, was considered something that should not be done and was not done in fact.

So Spain's transition to democracy was made possible by what people later began to refer to as the Pact of Oblivion, or the Pact of Forgetting, or the Pact of Silence, where the past was there, but it was not to be mined for political purposes, for partisan purposes. The era of Francoism gives way to a new era of silence, known as the Pact of Forgetting. This agreement to turn away from history is even codified in law, in the 1977 Amnesty Law. Spain opts to leave its past behind without looking its square in the eye. And that was generally accepted by the political class, but also by society at large, because the impression was strong around the transition in the 70s that Spain was really on the verge of another civil war. So the impression was that unless we collectively forget the past, we'll be at each other's throats before we know it

and start killing each other again, just like we did in 1936 to 1939. So the general acceptance of this forgetting was based in a real fear of repetition of the civil war. Only at the dawn of the 21st century do Spaniards really begin to revisit the horrors of the Civil War. Only at the dawn of the 21st century do Spaniards really begin to revisit the horrors of the Civil War and the years of terror that followed. As the new century begins,

the past is literally dug up through the exhumation of mass graves. We see a big change around about the year 2000 in the way some groups of Spaniards begin to think about the past. And I think there have been some quite big changes since the 1970s and 1980s that can help explain why some people at least were prepared to act in the year 2000 when they weren't in the 1970s or 1980s. or 1980s. One of the differences is, particularly in South America and other areas of the world, has been the rise of human rights culture and transitional justice, included truth and reconciliation committees or commissions, attempts to put leaders on trial, development of a whole human rights culture that I think began to influence activists in Spain. We also get the rise

of a new generation, they're the third generation, so the grandchildren of the people who were involved in the Spanish Civil War. I think a lot of those grandchildren felt that their grandparents and their parents hadn't want to talk about the Francoist repression and violence and the difficult past, partly because in the case of the grandparents, I think a lot of them were fearful about the consequences. So if you talk to your children or grandchildren about these events, maybe they'll start talking in public and then they'll face some kind of punishment or exclusion, which made them very fearful. I think the second generation maybe didn't want to talk about the past because I think they saw it as politically provocative and might lead to

instability. I think the third generation grew up without a lot of those fears, but also with a sense that they didn't know their own family history. And they could also see that in other countries, there were examples of transitional justice and facing the past. And I think those are some of the explanations about why in the rather year 2000, we see younger activists starting to carry out exhumations. In the year 2000, a journalist called Emilio Silva returns to his family's ancestral village, a place called Leon. He's thinking of writing a returns to his family's ancestral village, a place called León. He's thinking of writing a novel about his family's history.

As part of his research, he visits the graves of family members located in the tiny village cemetery. Looking at the names on the tombstones, he comes to a sudden realization. His grandfather's grave is missing. So he turns to his granduncles, older inhabitants of the village, and a local historian. Together they are able to discern the probable location of his grandfather's remains. The exhumation of Emilio Silva's grandfather is successfully undertaken in October 2000. Hundreds of similar situations arise in the coming years. Silva publishes an article about the hunt for his grandfather.

This helps to break the code of silence that has prevailed throughout Spain. Since the turn of the new millennium, 740 mass graves containing the remains of 9,000 people have been opened. Of that number, only a third of the individuals buried have been identified. So the work is far from finished. It will take years to locate and exhume all of Spain's mass burial grounds. But there is one grave in particular that holds significance for the Spanish public. The Valley of the Fallen.

Since its inauguration in 1959, thousands of victims of the Spanish Civil War have been interred there. It holds the remains of both Republican and Nationalist soldiers. When Francisco Franco died in 1975, he was buried atop these remains, in an ornate crypt. For years, those on the left called for the dictator's body to be removed from this national monument. Those on the far right pushed back. In 2019, the Spanish government finally agrees to relocate Franco's remains

and move them next to his wife's grave in Madrid. What happened was that after a long legal battle with the Franco family, which had opposed exhumation, finally the Supreme Court approved it. The exhumation was a fairly

solemn affair. Family was allowed to carry the coffin out of the Valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen. The then Minister of Justice was present as a representative of the government. And the whole thing was very honorable and it seemed very formal. For many people who associate or identify with the left, that in some way was ironic and painful because after a 20-year period since about 2000, when families of Franco's victims have been on their own digging up mass graves and identifying the remains and trying to give their grandfathers and grandmothers and uncles and aunts a proper reburial on their own dime. Now the Spanish government was allowing the dictator himself to be reburied in such a improperly solemn fashion. After Franco's exhumation,

the next step is to remove the remains of Republicans buried in the Valley of the Fallen. These bodies were moved here without the permission of their loved ones. Some families have spent decades demanding the right to excavate the site. In March 2021, the Spanish government finally approves a fund for the exhumation of these graves. Though these are powerful steps towards Spain's reconciliation with its past, Spaniards still have no legal avenue to pursue justice for family members who were victims of Franco's regime.

The Amnesty Law of 1977 holds, and there is really no judicial avenue available in Spain for the victims of Francoism to pursue justice through criminal justice. The Supreme Court acknowledges the victims' right to truth, but they say the truth that the victims have the right to is an historical truth, not a judicial truth. historians and anthropologists and whatever else to help the family members of the French regime to understand what happened and why and where bodies are and to recover them. But never can there be a judicial case against any representative of the regime for things they did between 1936 and 1975. This is a legal argument that has been disputed widely internationally and in Spain by Amnesty International, by Human Rights Watch, by the United Nations itself, with the argument that

international law has by now established beyond any doubt that crimes against humanity can never be susceptible to amnesty of any kind. Full stop laws don't apply and therefore that the victims of Franco dictatorship should have legal recourse in Spain. For the majority of Spaniards, Francisco Franco is a figure firmly consigned to the past. But some on the Spanish right continue to keep his flame alive. Spain, because Franco didn't go into the Second World War, was not defeated and was therefore not occupied by the Allies. So there did not take place in Spain, as there did in Italy, in Germany, in Japan,

a process of denazification. And Franco was left free to carry out this great work of national brainwashing. Now, at one level, the immediate obvious signs of the legacy are the street names and the statues and the Valle de los Caídos, all of that. and the Valle de los Caídos, all of that. But there's a kind of hidden legacy, which is that, of course, when Franco died on the 20th of November, 1975, all of the brainwashing wasn't erased. And when democracy was re-established

on the 15th of June, 1977, nor did the democracy, because it was a democracy, institute a kind of counter brainwashing so there were generations of people who'd been brought up to think that Franco was a great man and the savior of Spain and those ideas have persisted their children and so on and even though of course now there are generations of kids who don't even know Franco was, just as there are generations of kids in America who don't know who Roosevelt was, or here who don't know who Churchill was.

Nonetheless, there is still a very powerful sector of society that has a very positive image of Franco. The Spain of today is certainly not the Spain of Franco's dreams. It is a culturally diverse nation, where citizens enjoy freedom of religion, speech and expression. But look closely. Look beyond the veneer of sun-kissed modernity. And Franco's fingerprints are still there, right across the land. Next time, on Real Dictators.

We'll take a trip over the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa and the Arab world. On October 20th, 2011, a truck screeches through the rubble-strewn streets of northern Libya. French fighter jets circle overhead. The air is filled with the whoosh of rockets and the rasp of AK-47s. Inside the truck, in the passenger seat, sits Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. He has ruled Libya for 42 years. For many in the West, his name is a byword for terror. Gaddafi is the revolutionary who put Libya on the map, but squandered its riches, becoming, in the words of the CIA, the most

evil man in the world. But now, the erstwhile dictator is fleeing for his life through a war zone. How did it come to this? The rise and fall of Colonel Gaddafi. That's next time on Real Dictators. Real Dictators is presented by me, Paul McGann. The story of Francisco Franco was written and produced by Addison Nugent. The show was created by Pascal Hughes.

Produced by Joel Doudal. Editing and music by Oliver Baines, with strings recorded by Dory McCoy. Sound design and mix by Tom Pink, with edit assembly by George Tapp. Follow Noiser Podcasts on Twitter for news about upcoming series. If you haven't already, follow us wherever you listen to your favorite shows or check us out at realdictators.com. Tune in on Wednesdays for new episodes. you