Spain is gearing up for a long year commemorating the death of dictator Francisco Franco and the beginning of democracy in the country.
The Socialist Party (PSOE) and the left-wing alliance Sumar coalition government has spent €20 million on the programme titled Spain in Freedom, a series of cultural events largely critical of Franco’s regime.
Franco died on November 20, 1975. Sixteen events in the government programme are scheduled throughout Spain for tomorrow, ranging from photographic exhibitions to seminars on Francoism and theatrical performances.
One such performance is a play called The Death of the Bastard, in reference to Franco in which “the ghosts of those who died in exile awake to spit out their texts over his tomb”. There will be a show in the Congress of Deputies with acrobats, actors and music.
Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE is also running a daily online quiz on the dictatorship. That includes old television footage and several scheduled television specials about the dictatorship and its opposition.
Other groups are planning commemorations in honour 0f the dictator.
The Spanish Catholic Movement will lay flowers at Franco’s grave in Madrid tomorrow. The same group has called for masses for Franco’s soul in many locations throughout Spain.
The Platform 2025 group, meanwhile, states on its website: “Remember and vindicate the legacy of Francisco Franco on the 50th anniversary of his death.”
The agenda for its programme The Year of Franco includes a series of conferences, roundtables, exhibitions and the release of a book and documentary.
Franco led an uprising in 1936 that started a three-year civil war from which he emerged victorious.
He had planned for the restoration of the Spanish monarchy following his death and two days after his passing, Juan Carlos I was named King of Spain by Franco’s remaining government.
The political reforms that followed quickly led to general elections in 1977 and the establishment of a parliament with the mandate to write a new Constitution, approved by the Spanish population in a referendum in 1978.
The democratically elected government also passed an amnesty law that meant atrocities committed during the civil war and under Franco’s regime would not be prosecuted.
Nevertheless, the war and Franco’s dictatorship are still controversial subjects in Spain.
According to some, the political Left is only further dividing Spanish society by using recent history for political purposes. Others say not enough has been done to separate the dictator from Spanish democracy.
Ivan Velez, author of Nuestro Hombre en la CIA: Guerra Fria Antifrancismo, y Federalismo (Our Man in the CIA: Cold War, Anti-Francoism, and Federalism), considers the Franco nostalgia of groups like Platform 2025 a minority viewpoint but tells Brussels Signal: “Francoism transformed Spain.”
Franco is credited with industrialising Spain, opening the country to tourism and establishing a government-based welfare system.
Velez notes, too, that despite the political changes after Franco’s death, the democratic government maintained much of the Franco administration. With this in mind, he says he finds the current government’s memorial programme hypocritical.
“Now the Franco regime is being used in a totally ideological manner, above all by the hegemonic party, the Socialists, when we know that the main opposition to Franco was led by the Communists and by the Catholic Church [starting in the 1960s],” he says.
He adds that he fears the government’s caricature of the Franco regime as “the worst of the worst” may push young people in a reactionary direction to look favourably on the dictator.
Some members of the PSOE have criticised the programme for placing too much emphasis on Franco and too little on the transition to democracy.
Others, such as Emilio Silva, think the government is not doing enough to exorcise the ghost of Franco from Spanish society.
Silva’s civilian grandfather was arrested by pro-Franco forces along with 14 other men in 1936. One escaped but the rest were executed and buried in an unmarked mass grave.
According to Silva, the weight of political oppression, social stigma and the trauma of his grandfather’s disappearance haunted his family for generations.
In 2000, he finally located his grandfather’s grave and carried out one of the first scientific exhumations of a mass grave from the civil war. He then founded the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, dedicated to the discovery of the thousands of remaining unmarked graves of those who disappeared during the civil war.
“The government is creating a new myth,” he tells Brussels Signal. “In the transition they constructed the myth of reconciliation. Now the new myth is that Spain disconnected immediately from Franco.
“Franco continues to lie in a tomb with a fair amount of honour while his victims remain in common graves,” he adds.
The restoration of the monarchy will also be commemorated but with relatively less fanfare and with only a minor role played by the restored former king, Juan Carlos I.
Although he is considered to have played an important role in Spain’s peaceful transition to democracy, the monarch fell into disgrace in recent years following a series of scandals.
Juan Carlos I abdicated in favour of his son, King Philip VI, in 2014 and has been living in unofficial exile in Abu Dhabi, UAE, since 2020.
On November 21, the royal family will attend the academic congress 50 Years Later: the Crown in the Transition to Democracy held in the building of the Congress of Deputies.
Spain’s left-wing and separatist parties, many of which oppose the monarchy in favour of a republic and which include some members of government, have stated they will not attend.
The royals will hold a private lunch on November 22 at which Juan Carlos I will be a guest.
