Why did Franco die in bed as head of state?
Franco died in bed, but Francoism died in the street.
But didn't the dictator still die enjoying a broad social base?
He was a military dictator, who had won a terrible civil war and then purged an entire society for decades. And he died in bed because that purge freed him by force from arms and prisons of any effective opposition.
He was a dictator, but a very smart one?
Franco ended up learning the trade of dictator. At the beginning, in World War II he almost screwed up, because he wanted to get in...
Didn't he resist Hitler's courtship?
On the contrary: it is Hitler who is not interested in Spain as an ally. Between October 1940 and June 1941, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Pétain met eight times...
Didn't he deny help to Hitler in Hendaye?
Hendaye cannot be understood in isolation. An attempt was made to bring everyone's interests and ambitions together to form a common bloc against Great Britain, but Franco had nothing to do with it...
Franco, like Spain: he was sad and short.
Hitler was more interested in France and its powerful navy, and he managed to get Pétain to almost declare war on Great Britain.
And why not have Franco and Petain?
Because France and Spain were fighting over Morocco and Hitler gave it to Petain.
Did Hitler lose and Spain dragged on for 40 years the shame of the last Western dictatorship?
Unlike France, which knew how to erase the truth that Pétain and collaboration with Hitler had considerable support from the French. What we cannot ask of the anti-Franco resistance is that it achieve what no country in the world has achieved.
Hitler and Mussolini came to power without having to win a civil war.
And after three years of bloody civil war with hundreds of thousands of deaths and purges.
What did the anti-Franco revolution prevent?
The European fascist regimes were defeated in World War II, which Spain did not fight, and De Gaulle had to come to France from outside to change the Vichy regime. Because French resistance fighters, the truth is, there were four of them. Then that was made up.
And Franco then knew how to convert himself from a fascist altar boy to a fierce anti-communist.
Machiavelli, in The Prince, says that princes must be the result of combining good luck and virtue.
What did Franco have more of?
Luck. Good luck. Someone who should have died at the right time dies without having anything to do with it. And he is skilled at managing unexpected situations and choosing experts to advise and listen to him.
In what sense?
The Franco regime does not generate any situation on its own, but it knows how to take advantage of what happens and manages it well for what interests it, which is to remain in power.
Do they defeat Hitler and does he know how to turn around and be useful to Washington in the face of the Soviet danger?
He knows how to offer himself, within his secondary role, to the United States and the Western powers as a useful ally with whom they do not want to appear in the photo, but who would benefit from a fix.
Did we skillfully leave Guinea and Morocco?
Well yes if we compare it with France's misfortunes fighting in Algeria and Vietnam. And the colonial war also ends the Portuguese dictatorship...
In the end, was Spain less isolated than we thought? Did geopolitics decide?
Each generation of historians questions the previous one. What I question is the idea of a Spain singularly different from the rest of Europe. You cannot do the history of Spain in isolation. The same with the transition, which is not explained only by what happens in Spain; It is a more global phenomenon.
What do you change in your approach?
In the seventies there was not only a Spanish transition, but a wave: Portugal, Greece...
And why is that nuance so relevant?
Because it shows that Catalan and Basque nationalism are not realistic when analyzing the transition: they have idealized it as the reaction of a single people united by the language, but the reality is that Franco had many accomplices and sympathizers who were very Catalan-speaking and very Basque-speaking.
It's not that Franco promoted them either.
It excluded Catalan and Basque from the educational system and that did tremendous damage, but it is true that Spain is diverse and resists this uniformization. Unlike France, which imposed a state language without resistance.
Didn't Franco liquidate our diversity?
Spain is by definition diverse: so much so that even the dictatorship has to skip its territorial centralism when it suits it.
Did Juan Carlos I have a well-planned plan to establish democracy?
It is unsustainable to believe it; Just like thinking that he only wanted to redirect the dictatorship.
