Francisco Franco polarized world opinion, to put it mildly, after overthrowing Spain’s leftist regime in a bloody civil war and installing himself as the country’s ruler. Previous biographies have been polemical. In their new book, UW-Madison and University of Madrid history professors Stanley G. Payne and Jesús Palacios cogently evaluate the man from the less fervid perspective of now. They find many surprises.
Once the purges had ended, Franco presided over a lax regime as 20th century dictatorships went. He was laconic and introverted, unlike Hitler or Mussolini; distrustful but not paranoid, unlike Stalin; personally honest and frugal but tolerant of corruption by loyal followers. As a field commander, he summarily executed a man for disrespect, but as head of a military school, he banned bullying and hazing. Something of a conservationist, he reforested Spain’s barren lands. Franco’s brand of Fascism promised a way between capitalism and Communism, but the aging dictator was at least dimly aware that the cultural tide of the 1960s would carry his country down a different stream and into modern Europe.
