The Caudillo continues to cast a long shadow on Spanish society. How is it that a country known for being a progressive beacon, a country which had the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested for crimes against humanity in 1998, is unable to come to terms with its own past? As the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death approaches, to what extent is the rise in historical revisionism and the memory of Franco empowering the Spanish far right?
Despite recent laws forbidding glorifying the Spanish Civil War and excusing Francoism, the ‘Cara al sol’ hymn to Franco is regularly heard at Vox rallies. This extreme right-wing party has adopted Franco’s narrative on Spanish national identity and made the rehabilitation of the dictator a key part of its electoral campaign. Every November 20, the date of Franco’s death, some twenty churches in Spain still hold masses in memory of the dictator. In Madrid, the Franco Foundation, set up to “honor the memory” of the general, still receives subsidies. It can count on the support of Madrid’s current mayor, Jose Luis Martinez Almeida, a self-proclaimed fascist. Among other things, he had a mausoleum dedicated to the 3,000 people shot in the ravines of the capital’s largest cemetery between 1940 and 1945 demolished.
Some institutions, such as the Spanish Church, co-responsible with Franco’s regime for the theft of thousands of babies from Spanish maternity wards, still refuse to open their archives, despite the memorial laws that oblige them to do so.
In Spain, after decades of silence, never has there been so much talk about the Civil War and Franco as there is today.