Spaniards: What's your view of the Franco era?

[Leliana]

¡Buenos dias espanoles!

I always wanted to ask about your feelings and thoughts about the Franco era. Uhm, I know it's a touchy and sensitive topic for most Spaniards but it's still the longest epoch of Spain in the 20th century.

In the Spanish Civil War and the time thereafter, lots of people died and were killed on both sides. The Nationalists murdered Republicans, Communists, Internationalists, trade unionists and other insurgents but the Republicans killed tens of thousands of Catholic clerics, Falangists and other members of rightist parties ditto.

Republican army was larger in number but the Nationalists were better trained and with the support of other nationalist countries/groups, Nazi Germany and 'Operation Condor', the Nationalists could gain more and more control and territories in Spain.

The Franco era was a quasi-totalitarian regime but not a backward, isolationist system like North Korea or Kuba. In 50's and 60's, Franco forced the tourist business, followed by more reforms in the 70's. The Catholic church sided strongly with the Franco era, in Spanish Civil War and in the time of peace till the death of Franco in 1975.

As a Catholic and German patriot I wonder how our Spanish board member assess the era.

Poll is anonymous.

¡Muchas gracias!

[Graus]

I hope they are grateful, we saved them from communism.

[Lábaru]

Like the nazism Franco is externalized as a very negative era of Spain, the education we have received all the Spanish from 1975 onwards is to reject everything that has to do with the Franco regime.

[Damião de Góis]

Do spaniards generally think he deserves a burial site like this?

[Turkophagos]

Franco, Salazar and Papadopoulos are a shame for post WW2 European history. We're not some backward 3rd world countries to need a dictator in order to be ruled.


On the other hand if you compare these dictators to our modern politicians, you can only get nostalgic about the era of their reign...

[Peyrol]

I thought this was a tread for spaniards, not for all the european people...

[Lábaru]

Do spaniards generally think he deserves a burial site like this?

if an Egyptian emperor deserves its pyramid, after killing their builders, why not Franco?

El Valle de los Caídos produces 10,000 million euros every year in tourist visits.

[Lábaru]

I hope they are grateful, we saved them from communism.

Like the Lannisters the Spanish always pays their debts---->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Division ------>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Di...-bolshevism%29

[Garbo]

I hope they are grateful, we saved them from communism.

I'm not sure whether Spain becoming a communist country would have been a worst fate than what we got.

Sure, not everything in Franco's regime was all that bad. The 1940's had Spaniards starving, repressed and living in fear, the 50's saw the Spaniards go backwards, and repressing stupid shit such as regional languages, rewritting of the history to make Spain a fake uniform nation that we never were and will never be. That planted the seeds of today's mass support for pernicious nationalist polititians.

The 60's and 70's brought us the destruction of the Spanish interior with mass migration to the main 3 or 4 metropolitan areas. 200km from Madrid today the population density is inferior to the Sahara desert. Thousands of small pueblos lay abandoned, their cultures dead, their architectonic treasures in ruins. Aragon and Castile, formerly great kingdoms now lay depopulated , largely forgotten and poor.


Also, Franco era never came to an end. Our chief of state was appointed by franco, and our constitution (signed by left and right and nationalist parties) is essentially a "Status Quo" piece of rag which allows the military to take the control of the government , legally if "the situation is needed", agrees that some of the Spaish Autonomous communities have still important privileges over others among other "pearls".

Most of the core politicians of the main political parties of Spain are the same that were there during the regime or their direct heirs.

We live in a non democratic, non free ultraliberal friendly crossover between Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's brave new world where 2 companies decide whether you will be warm this winter or will not be able to turn the heater on. Where our strategic industries were sold to the highest bidder in exchange for power and favours to our political class.

At least the poles don't need to be friendly with hoards of hateful latinos, moors and romanians.

Also, we can invetsigate the crimes of other countries dictatorships , but not of our own. The valle de los caídos is simply grotesque. The story if its construction is scary as fuck (my grandfather was one of the slave prisoners that helped building it)

[Garbo]

I thought this was a tread for spaniards, not for all the european people...

Portuguese are basically Spaniards . Salazar and Franco were close buddies



About the Greeks, they feel like Spaniards too. At least they look like us and they sound like us.