Franco y Bahamonde, Francisco

b. 1892; d. 1975

Spanish Dictator and leader of the Spanish rebel forces in the Civil War, 1936-39. Born in Galacia, he entered the army, where he spent most of his early military service in Morocco. In 1933 he was in command of the Balearic Islands, and, in 1935, became chief of staff of the Spanish Army. On 2 February 1936 he was sent by the Azaña government as governor to the Canary Islands, from where he flew to Morocco to organise the military uprising, in July 1936, that led to the Spanish Civil War. Franco assumed the leadership of the rebel forces after Gen. Sanjurjo, their original head, was killed in a plane accident. On 1 October 1936 he proclaimed himself 'Caudillo', or chief of the state and commander-in-chief.

After three years of bitter fighting, in the course of which he received material help in men, planes, and munitions from Italy and Germany, he crushed the Republicans, who had received some support from the USSR, and became master of Spain. Franco joined the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1939. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 he declared Spain's neutrality, though until well into 1944 his speeches and general policy were markedly pro-German. In 1947, on the eighth anniversary of his seizure of power, Franco announced that Spain was to become a monarchy again, with himself as chief of state. The bill defining the new constitution, however, made it clear that there would be no restoration of a king until the death or disability of Franco.

After the Second World War Franco successfully maintained his internal position in Spain, despite economic difficulties and, at times, difficulties with the Falangists, who sometimes considered his policy to be veering away from their principles, and churchmen who came to fear the consequences of the close association of the Spanish Church with the regime. The pact signed with the USA in 1953 was the beginning of Spain's post-war acceptance among western nations. Franco's rule remained a dictatorship, though in the judgement of some observers its severity lessened in his later years.

The assassination of the Vice-President, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, in 1973, followed by the change of government in Portugal in 1974, produced the most serious dislocations in Franco's long-established balancing act. Thereafter regional and sectional opposition to his rule grew apace, with Basque and anarchist terrorists to the fore. The execution of five of these in October 1975 attracted international attention to Spain again, and one month later Franco died. Neither during his protracted last illness nor at his death was it possible to gauge whether Franco had been able to acquire any really broad basis of positive popular support.

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