Why did Franco die in bed as head of state?
Franco died in his bed, but Francoism died in the street.
But, despite this, didn't the dictator 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 of arms and prisons from any effective opposition.
He was a dictator, but a very clever one?
Franco ended up learning the trade of dictator. In its beginnings, during the Second World War, it almost put its foot in, because it wanted to enter it...
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 meet eight times...
Didn't he deny help to Hitler in Hendaye?
Hendaye cannot be understood in isolation. They try to agree the interests and ambitions of all to form a common block against Great Britain, but Franco was not painting anything...
Franco, like Spain: he was sad and short.
Hitler was more interested in France and its powerful navy, and makes Pétain almost declare war on Britain.
And why not have Franco and Petain?
Because France and Spain were disputing Morocco and Hitler gave it to Pétain.
Did Hitler lose and did Spain suffer the disgrace of being the last dictatorship of the West?
France, on the other hand, did know how to erase the truth, and that is that Pétain and the collaborationism with Hitler had considerable support from the French. What we cannot ask of the anti-Franco resistance is to achieve what no other country in the world did.
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 prevented the anti-Franco revolution?
The European fascist regimes were defeated in the Second World War that Spain did not start, and De Gaulle had to go to France from outside to change the Vichy regime. Because there were actually four French resistance fighters. Then that situation was made up.
And Franco was then able to transform himself from a fascist schoolboy into a ferocious anti-communist.
Machiavelli, in The Prince, says that princes must be the result of combining good fortune and virtue.
What else did Franco have?
good luck Good Luck. He dies who should have died at the right time without having anything to do with it. And he is skilled at managing the situations that arise and at choosing experts who advise and listen to him.
In what sense?
Francoism does not create any situation by itself, but it knows how to take advantage of what happens and manages it well for what interests it, which is to be in power.
Defeat Hitler and he knows how to turn and be useful in Washington in the face of the Soviet danger?
He knows how to offer himself, in his secondary role, to the US and the Western powers as a useful ally with whom they do not want to be photographed, but which suits them.
Did we leave Guinea and Morocco with skill?
Well yes if we compare it with the misfortunes of France in its struggle in Algeria and Vietnam. And the colonial war also ends the Portuguese dictatorship...
In the end Spain was less isolated than we thought? Did geopolitics decide?
Each generation of historians questions the previous one. What I am questioning is the idea of a Spain that is singularly different from the rest of Europe. The history of Spain cannot be made in isolation. The same happens with the transition, which is not explained only by what is happening 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 this nuance so relevant?
Because it is clear that Catalan and Basque nationalisms are not realistic when they analyze the transition: they have idealized it as the reaction of a single people united by language, and the truth is that Franco had numerous accomplices and sympathizers who were very Catalan-speaking and Basque-speaking.
Nor is it that Franco promoted them.
He excluded Catalan and Basque from the education system and that hurt a lot, but Spain is diverse and resists this standardization. In contrast to 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 Joan Carles I have a well-laid plan to establish democracy?
It is unsustainable to think that, as well as to think that he only wanted to renew the dictatorship.
