In March 1939, the Spanish Civil War ended. The last republicans left through the Pyrenean passes to France.
The new power in Spain was personified by General Franco - the rank of Generalissimo was awarded to him later. His position and position were determined by the title "caudillo" - "leader".
By the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco Baamonde y Salgado Araujo was 44 years old.
The leader looked older than his years. He had an unpresentable appearance - short (157 cm), short-legged, prone to corpulence, with a thin, piercing voice and awkward gestures. German friends from among the "blond beasts" looked at Franco in amazement: in the face of the generalissimo, Semitic features were clearly visible. There were enough reasons: the Arabs ruled the Iberian Peninsula for centuries, the number of Jews in the Cordoba Caliphate reached one-eighth of the population … Moreover, Franco was not a "castigliano" - he was born in Galicia, inhabited by the Portuguese.
The ominously romantic Soviet version of the start of the Spanish nationalist uprising is a lie. The phrase "Above all of Spain, the sky is clear" (option: cloudless) did not at all serve as a conditioned signal. It ended the usual morning weather forecast on July 18, 1936 - it was the signal.
The uprising of the Spanish right against the Republican government was largely provoked by the Republicans themselves.
The Popular Front government was a motley gathering of leftists, leftists and leftists of all shades - from Social Democrats and Socialists to Trotskyists and anarchists. The left slope was getting steeper. Anarchy, partisanship and economic chaos pushed the country into complete collapse. Political repressions of the Leninist-Stalinist pattern were gaining more and more scope. Instead of bread and work, the people were offered decrees and slogans. The left regime hung like a weight on the neck of a Spanish peasant who had to feed a horde of leaders, agitators and talkers for nothing, because the republicans had banned free trade.
The political pendulum inevitably moved from the extreme left to the extreme right. A center of forces, a point of reconciliation of interests, never emerged in the country. The Catholic Church enjoyed tremendous authority; Republicans did not dare to de-Christianize, but made a blood enemy in the church, and hidden enemies among the masses of believers.
The right-wing forces did not shine with virtues either. The camp of Franco's supporters was dominated by dense obscurantism and political retrograde.
The landowning aristocracy and well-worn nobles puffed out their chests and puffed out their cheeks for no particular reason - they could not even really finance the uprising that had begun. It is not surprising that the nationalists immediately requested help from Germany and Italy, and the bulk of their armed forces were mobilized peasants and Arab-Berber riflemen from Morocco.
Republicans on their territory did not spare the bourgeoisie. But the nationalists were not inferior to them in anything. The insurgents' slogan sounded peculiar - "People, monarchy, faith." That is, it had little in common with the slogans of the Italian "Fascio di Combatimento" and the German "National Socialists".
Mussolini, the ideologue of the corporate state, was indifferent to the church and despised the monarchy. Hitler was a militant anti-Christian and anti-Semite. With Franco, these leaders converged only on nationalism. But Franco's nationalism was "international" - he considered all the citizens of the country without racial and tribal differences to be Spaniards. The ideological basis of the Franco regime was Catholicism, and politically he was going to restore the monarchy.
Becoming the head of the country, Franco found himself in a difficult position. To retain power and pull Spain out of the quagmire, he could only desperately maneuver. Which I started to do.
Franco understood that with friends like Hitler and Mussolini, he would inevitably be drawn into a world war. If Hitler wins - Spain will gain nothing, if Hitler loses - Spain will cease to be.
Franco declared neutrality. He made gestures towards Hitler to keep his friend at a decent distance. Allowed ships and submarines of the German Navy to bunker in Spanish ports, supplying them with tobacco, oranges and fresh water. Received from Argentina ships with grain and meat for Germany, passed these goods through Spanish territory. When the war with Russia began, he sent one division there, but did not subordinate it to the command of the Wehrmacht. He did not allow German troops to enter Spain. He spoke very respectfully of Churchill and maintained diplomatic relations with England. With restraint, without emotion, he spoke about Stalin.
Under Franco, there was not only genocide of Jews in Spain, but also restrictive measures against them.
When the war ended, the troops of the anti-Hitler coalition did not enter Spain - there were not even formal reasons for that. The few surviving military and officials who lost the war of the Axis countries and managed to get to Spain, Franco quickly sent off to Latin America.
The situation in the country remained difficult. Spain was denied assistance according to the "Marshall Plan", NATO was not accepted, and the UN was not admitted until 1955 as a country with an authoritarian-dictatorial regime.
In 1947 Franco declared Spain a monarchy with a vacant throne and proclaimed the principle of autarchy (self-reliance).
There was someone to occupy the vacant throne. The dynasty was not stopped. Juan Carlos, the grandson of the deposed in 1931 King Alfonso XIII, lived and flourished, although at that time he was still a nine-year-old child.
The caudillo was involved in the upbringing of the future monarch himself, not entrusting this important matter to anyone. I talked with the young prince, followed his teachings, read books to him, attended church services with him, instructed him to be the head of the nation. At the same time, Franco frankly made it clear to Juan Carlos that he would not announce his enthronement upon reaching the age of majority, he would have to wait. The leader reasonably adhered to the Mosaic principle - to lead the people through the desert for forty years, until the past life is forgotten; he understood that the young king simply could not cope with the ossified legacy, he could easily become a toy in the hands of the Old Testament intriguers and military adventurers.
King Juan Carlos later recalled how surprised Franco's attitude to religion and the church was. In observing external piety, the Generalissimo was punctual, but internally he did not differ in special religious zeal. A professional soldier, he perceived faith as a disciplining factor and one of the means of politics, but nothing more. In particular, he categorically objected to the increase in the number of monasticism, demanded from the clergy, first of all, social, secular activity.
Franco's regime was clearly conservative-patriotic. He ruled by military-oligarchic methods. He censored the press, severely suppressed political opposition and national separatists, banned all parties and trade unions (except for "vertical" Soviet-type trade unions), did not hesitate to apply the death penalty for clandestine activities, did not allow prisons to be empty. It is curious: the severity of the repressions in Spain has noticeably softened after the death of Stalin …
To his own party, the Spanish Phalanx, in the mid-1950s. renamed the National Movement and became something of a "union of associates" under the leader, Franco was skeptical. A surrogate party in the country was the Catholic congregation "Opus Dei" ("God's Work"). In the early 1960s, Franco generally expelled all the Phalangists from the government. And a little earlier, in spite of the resistance of the party members, he sharply reduced the number of the officer and general corps. The non-producing class in Spain had grown so much that there were two generals per army regiment.
Officially, the Generalissimo pursued a line of general reconciliation and automatic amnesty to all who declared their loyalty. In the Valley of the Fallen near Madrid, at the direction of Franco, a grandiose memorial was erected with a fraternal cemetery to the victims of the civil war of both sides. The monument to the fallen is very simple and impressive - it is a huge Catholic cross.
Isolation and the principle of autarchy helped Spain survive, but did not contribute to economic growth. It was only in the late 1950s that Franco allowed foreign capital into the country and allowed the creation of joint ventures. Gradually got rid of all the Spanish colonies, of which there was no sense, but the threat of colonial wars hung constantly.
Francisco Franco and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1959
Nevertheless, until the early 1960s. Spain remained one of the poorest countries in Western Europe. Ten years later, it became clear that Franco's regime had exhausted itself. The Generalissimo ended the turmoil in the country with iron and blood, crushed the opposition, guarded the sovereignty - but the "social world in Spanish" looked like the splendid peace of a poor monastery school. The population of the country approached 40 million people, and the economy did not develop, unemployment grew, and there was "stagnation in poverty." Mass labor migration of the Spaniards, mainly to France, and the development of foreign tourism could not feed the country. The post-war generation of young Spaniards showed little respect for the conservative religious values of the caudillo regime.
In 1975, after having been in power for 36 years without interruption (and a little short of the "Moses term"), Generalissimo Franco died. The rightful heir, the current king Juan Carlos, ascended the vacant throne. For six years the country was rocked by tremors of intoxication with freedom, political parties proliferated like flies. In February 1981, the dashing Colonel Tejero Molina burst into parliament, fired a pistol at the ceiling and tried to make a coup - but after two hours he turned sour and surrendered. In 1982, the socialist party of Felipe Gonzalez won the general election. The country seemed to have returned to 1936 - but inside and outside it, everything was already different.
The Spaniards consider the era of Franco's rule not the worst time in the history of Spain. Especially in the light of the chronic and unceasing socio-economic crises and cataclysms constantly occurring in recent decades. The name of the generalissimo in Spain has not been deleted.
