“Despite having enjoyed a prominent position in public life for 50 years and living in the age of television, Francisco Franco He is the least known of the great dictators of the 20th century. This is partly due to the smokescreen created by his hagiographers and propagandists. ” This is how the biography begins. paul preston Dedicated to the dictator, this book hit bookstores in 1993 and was conceived as: the most complete of all published Half a century has passed since the main character died in his bed on November 20th.
For 50 years, historians and essayists were able to develop their research with freedoms that did not exist during the dictator’s lifetime. As a result of the smokescreen that Preston alluded to, Fran. leader of spain (republished by Debate in 2015) is a biographical hagiography he dedicated to him in 1937, during the height of the Civil War. Joaquin ArarasAccording to British historians, Franco’s “lifelong friend”. Araras also signed History of the Spanish Crusadesthere is no doubt that the title is biased by the author.
Preston’s book served as a reference for many subsequent historians and was the first to mention the number of victims of the conflict. Speaking of the end of the fratricidal conflict, he said, “This victory cost more than 500,000 lives, and it will cost many more.” And he added, “For him… Victory meant the annihilation of huge numbers of Republicans.the complete humiliation and horror of those who survived.
Among the many vicissitudes of his life, Franco, a Hispanist, was baptized as: Francisco Paulino Ermenegildo Teoduro– focuses on abandonment from the father. This trauma affected him so much that after the war he tried to “create a perfect past.” in the movie race (1941), inspired by his life – a “hero”, his pious mother, and his brother are clearly identified – his father died in the Cuban War.
Preston describes his biographer’s hometown of Ferrol as follows: “A city with strict social stratification” Naval officers are at the top. Franco was the son of a naval chief, so his family was in the “lower middle class.” That’s why he tried to join the Navy, and the “failure” of this attempt “will weigh heavily on him.”
He then chose the Army and entered the Academy in Toledo. He would undergo a baptism of fire in the bloody Moroccan war. “There is little doubt that Spending the first years of his adult life under the inhuman brutality of the legion contributed to Franco’s dehumanization.”.
Preston said the dictator’s “cunning” and “ability to discern people’s weaknesses and values almost instantaneously” allowed him to learn that “potential adversaries could become collaborators by virtue of goodwill,” which could extend to anything from ministries and embassies to “just a box of cigars.”
However, “his instructions and orders at the economic level” are considered “deplorable”. ”black market and corruption “These remained a hallmark of the Spanish economy well into the 1950s.”
autobiographical novel
A year before Preston began a thorough investigation into Caudillo, Planeta Autobiography of General Franco In this film, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán transforms into the writer Marcial Pombo, the son of a vengeful man who is commissioned to write the biography of a general. The author would end up reproducing each statement about the former head of state and even correcting the spelling of his second surname, Bahamond. “General, cut down on the axe,” he would say.
From the same year 1992 Franco, psychobiography (Today’s topics), from a psychiatrist Enrique González Duro. In addition to delving into the social and physical complexes that left the mark of the dictator, the author reveals traumas such as being abandoned by the aforementioned womanizing father. In 2006, shadow of the general (Discussion), González Duro investigated the persistence in Spanish society of attitudes reflecting Francoism derived from years of social control.
In 2000, cavalry colonel Carlos Blanco Escola published: Franco’s military incompetence (Alianza Editorial) In it, he claims that the nationalist leaders of the war won the conflict thanks to the material and financial support of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Blanco Escola claims that instead of taking the initiative, Franco responded to the demands of Republican General Vicente Rojo and ended up dedicating another book. General who humiliated Franco (planet).
benevolent biography
In 2005, historian Luis Suárez published a biography using the simple surname Ferrolano, published by Ariel Publishers, in which he goes so far as to assert that Ferrolano was not even a dictator. Perhaps he is better remembered for his entry in the Dictionary of Spanish Biography in 2011, which emphasized that his perspective was “authoritarian, not totalitarian.” “I’m not going to fix it,” he said in an interview.
This is also from 2005 Franco, historical balanceof Pio Moa (planet). An author who has been controversial since gaining attention for “ Civil War mythology (La Esfera de los Libros, 2003), More’s work is compared to the plan proposed by hagiographer Joaquín Araraz.
2014, Veteran American Historian Stanley G. Payne and a journalist Jesus Palacios they wrote together Fran. personal and political biography (Esparza). Paine is known for his highly critical works on the Second Republic, blaming the “sectarianism” of the Republican left for leading Spain to war and justifying Franco’s coup.
recent works
One of the most admired biographies of Franco is Enrique MoradierosProfessor of Modern History at the University of Extremadura, published in 2018 under the title Fran. autopsy of a dictator (Turner). Moradiellos recognizes his military talent and political ability, but after the war he has a profile of “Catholic integrity” who supported the process of “fascistization” of the regime and believes that he will be gradually eliminated if the Axis powers lose the war.
This year 2025, Professor at the University of Zaragoza julian casanova public Franc (criticism). In an interview with El Cultural newspaper, Casanova emphasized that “the decade of the 1950s is a time to explain the Franco regime as a whole.” That’s when the Opus Dei technocrats entered the government and replaced the Phalangists and their disastrous economic direction to direct the situation.
From the same year Fran. the dictator who shaped the country (Debate), written by British journalist Giles Tremlett. former correspondent guardian In Madrid, Tremlett declared that the dictator had no political project other than his own.
In conclusion, two thoughts on Preston’s canon. First, the dictator’s anti-communism obsessiveness, which he proposed to “eradicate”, and what he accomplished was that in the year after his death, the PCE “had 200,000 members,” meaning it was “far more powerful than it had been during the Civil War.”
The second is that, despite everything, “Franco may not have been Sid, but he was not as denied or lucky as his enemies suggest.”
About The Author
