Heads Of State From Spain

"Neither the Nazis nor the Italians were able to cash in on their "investments" in Spain. Franco saw Hitler only once and, as an old specialist on criminals from his days in the Tercio, he immediately sized up his partner."

"The Madrid victory parade took place on May 19. This time we formed the letters "F-R-A-N-C-O," a still more difficult flying maneuver. We flew straight up the Castellana, high in the clear sky, while thousands of troops, tanks, and guns moved through the city. The enthusiasm was unsurpassed. A few months later I retired from the air force, but I remain in the reserve to this day. On October 19, 1939, Paz and I were married in Seville's magnificent cathedral. We now have six children, two girls and four boys, age eight to twenty-four. We had won the war, yet our troubles were not over by any means. A major work of reconstruction lay ahead for a ruined but vigorous and proud country. But a new World War was looming up menacingly and was to delay and hinder the steep uphill climb; also ahead lay the years of isolation by a hostile world. The years have flown and hate's sharp and bitter edge has been dulled and blunted by the healing balm of time. New generations have sprung up to fill the ranks where once stood veterans, united, shoulder to shoulder, to save Spain, our beloved country, from national death. Reconstruction has, in truth, flourished under the warm sun of social justice and twenty-five years of peace, our hard-won peace. The firm and steady hand of a great captain and patriot, in my view one of the greatest in Spain's long history, has held the tiller of the ship of state through fierce gales and in and out of sharp reefs, to steer it to a calm and prosperous anchorage. If the spirit, courage, and overwhelming national enthusiasm born on July 18, 1936, can be kept alive by present generations and kindled in succeeding ones Spain need have no fear from any internal foes nor from inveterate enemies beyond her frontiers."

"And who could tell if we were to be forced into the conflict? No one at the time could predict. We were to suffer long years of uncertainty during the World War while Spain slowly but proudly recovered from her deep wounds, unaided and isolated. Our not being drawn into war (which would have completed Spain's ruin), was, as everyone knows now, entirely due to General Franco's inflexible firmness of purpose. Not even Hitler, at the height of his power, was able to sway him to his side or alter his determination to keep Spain out of it- a remarkable feat. From the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War to this day, much has happened and much good has come to this country. Her astounding and heroic effort has not gone unrewarded, as fifteen million tourists (in 1964) can testify."

"The crucial difference was between the regimes of the old Right, who wanted to turn the clock back to a pre-democratic elitist era, and the new Right who seized and sustained power through the instruments of mass politics. The former included General Franco and the Greek dictator Metaxas, men who feared mass politics and allied themselves with bastions of the established order such as the monarchy and the Church...the new radical Right, in contrast, rose to power in Italy and Germany through elections and the parliamentary process."

"There is no question for any decent, kindly man or woman, let alone a poet or writer, who must be more sensitive. We have to be against Franco and Fascism and for the people of Spain, and the future of gentleness and brotherhood which ordinary men and women want all over the world."

"General Francisco Franco, the generalissimo of Spain from 1939 to 1975, is in some ways the forgotten tyrant, his deeds overshadowed by Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, yet he was truly one of history's monsters. In the 1930s, this fascistic warlord won power with brutality and terror in a savage civil war, aided by his ally Hitler, and proceeded to terrorize the civilian population of Spain for 25 years. As democracy thrived in the rest of Western Europe following the Second World War, his brutal military dictatorship continued to crush dissent, and to shoot and torture his supposed enemies."

"Repression characterized every aspect of Franco’s regime. He nominally re-established the monarchy without appointing a king — but retained all executive powers in his own hands. Democracy was abandoned, criticism regarded as treason, imprisonment and abuse of opponents rife, parliament a mere puppet to the executive, rival political parties and strikes banned, the Catholic Church given a free rein over social policy and education, the media muzzled, creative talent strangled by strict censorship and any dissent ruthlessly suppressed by his secret police, who practised widespread torture and murder right up to Franco’s death in 1975. Dismissive of international criticism, Franco himself insisted on personally signing all death warrants until his death while his family married into the aristocracy and amassed colossal wealth."

"The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans and Italians, whose motives were obvious enough. The motives of France and Britain are less easy to understand. In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds’ worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question."

"General Franco, whom Sir Winston Churchill has praised as a "gallant Christian gentleman", has forbidden any work of fiction alluding to adultery, though I believe he had made a special exception for the Iliad."

"He paid no attention to Franco's military advice because he considered it cowardly, and because he preferred those of the Romanian with an Aryan-Teutonic racial appearance" (sic)."

"I saw that Franco had made a heroic and colossal attempt to save his country from disintegration. With this understanding there also came amazement: there had been destruction all around, but with firm tactics Franco had managed to have Spain sidestep the Second World War without involving itself, and for twenty, thirty, thirty-five years, had kept Spain Christian against all history’s laws of decline! But then in the thirty-seventh year of his rule he died, dying to a chorus of nasty jeers from the European socialists, radicals, and liberals."

"It is time to visit General Francisco Franco. A short taxi ride does it, and I am deposited at the foot of a giant, prancing stone horse bearing a triumphant-looking granite copy of the dictator.This, the only public statue of the "caudillo (leader) for God and the fatherland" left in Madrid, stands at the gates to the environment ministry. Here, spattered with red paint hurled by protesters and with a few bunches of wilting flowers left by his admirers, General Franco must remain. For the conservative-run city hall has decreed the generalísimo does not deserve to be knocked off his pedestal. Barring a small, remote Caudillo Square and a Franco Street that may or may not be named after him, this is all that remains of the man who ruled Spain for 36 years."

"Minneapolis residents say they feel besieged under what some are calling a fascist occupation. Thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been swarming a city whose vast majority in 2024 did not vote for Donald Trump – or for a paramilitary roundup of its diverse population. Tragically, two residents have been killed by federal agents. Consequently, social media is aflame with comparisons of Trump’s immigration enforcers to Hitler’s Gestapo. While comparisons to Hitler’s fascist regime are becoming common, I’d argue that it may be even more fitting to compare the present moment to a less-remembered but longer-lasting fascist regime: that of Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain from 1936 until his death in 1975. In 2016, critics warned that Trump’s campaign rhetoric was grounded in textbook fascism, exhibiting signs such as racism, sexism and misogyny, nationalism, propaganda and more. In return, critics were met with intense backlash, accused of being hysterical or overly dramatic. Now, even normally sober voices are sounding the alarm that America may be falling to fascist rule. As a scholar of Spanish culture, I, too, see troubling parallels between Franco’s Spain and Trump’s America."

"We do not rule out that it will change in the future, but for now it is. I am convinced that Masonry is very good for England in England; the bad thing is that in Spain it is still very good for England."

"Economically, Franco implemented autarkic policies, a system of limited trade designed to isolate Spain and protect it from anti-Spanish influences. He utilized high tariffs, strict quotas, border controls and currency manipulation, effectively impoverishing the nation and vastly enriching himself and his cronies. These policies flew under the motto “¡Arriba España!,” or “Up Spain.” They nearly immediately triggered more than a decade of suffering known as the “hunger years.” An estimated 200,000 Spaniards died from famine and disease. Under the slogan “America First” – Trump’s mutable but aggressive tariff regime – the $1 billion or more in personal wealth he’s accumulated while in office, along with his repeated attempts to cut nutrition benefits in blue states and his administration’s anti-vaccine policies may appear to be disconnected. But together, they galvanize an autarkic strategy that threatens to debilitate the country’s health."

"In the wake of the public and political backlash following the killing of Alex Pretti, Trump signaled he would reduce immigration enforcement operations] in Minneapolis, only to turn around and have Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorize the use of an old military base near St. Paul, suggesting potential escalation, not de-escalation. Saying one thing while doing the opposite is a classic fascist trick warned about in history and literature alike. The world has seen these tactics before. History shows the precedent and then supplies the bad ending. Comparing past Francoism to present Trumpism connects the past to the present and warns us about what could come."

"If I were a Spaniard I should be fighting for General Franco. As an Englishman I am not in the predicament of choosing between two evils. I am not a Fascist, nor shall I become one unless it were the only alternative to Marxism. It is mischievous to suggest that such a choice is imminent."

"Franco, that murderous little "Christian gentleman"."

"At El Pardo, the former royal hunting lodge on the outskirts of Madrid where Franco lived and worked, his ormolu-mounted desk and a nearby table were piled high with reports and memorandums, virtually all of them unread. "When the piles become too high," he once told Prince Juan Carlos, "I have everything taken out from the bottom and burned.""

"It has thicker skin than a rhinoceros."

"Franco not only weaponized the military but also proverbially enlisted the Catholic Church. He colluded with the clergy to convince parishioners, especially women, of their divine duty to multiply, instill nationalist Catholic values in their children, and thus reproduce ideological replicas of both the state and the church. From the pulpit, homemakers were extolled as “ángeles del hogar” and “heroínas de la patria,” or “angels of the home” and “heroines of the homeland.” Together, Franco and the church constructed consent for social restrictions, including outlawing or criminalizing abortion, contraception, divorce, work by women and other women’s rights, along with even tolerating uxoricide, or the killing of wives, for their perceived sexual transgressions. Some scholars contend that the repealing of women’s reproductive rights is the first step away from a fully democratic society. For this reason and more, many are concerned about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade. The #tradwife social media trend involves far-right platforms echoing Francoist-style ideologies of submission, restriction, dependence and white male dominance. One of TikTok’s most popular tradwife influencers, for instance, posted that “there is no higher calling than being a wife and a mother for a woman.” She also questioned young women attending college and rebuked, on air, wives who deny their husbands sexual intimacy."

"The defence of internal peace and order constitutes the sacred mission of a nation's armed forces and that is what we have carried out."

"The Spanish Republic did not find itself free of obligations. For the most part the leaders were Freemasons. Before their duty to their country came their obligations to the Grand Orient. In my opinion, Freemasonry, with all its international influence, is the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain, as well as the murder of Calvo Sotelo, who was executed in accordance with orders from the Grand Secretary of Freemasonry in Geneva."