The general who turned the rising into victory and ruled Spain for thirty-six years as Caudillo
The last war communiqué of 1 April 1939, signed in his own hand: “Today, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the national troops have reached their final military objectives. The war is over.” Thirty-six years of dictatorship began.
A career officer who made his name in the colonial war in Morocco and became the youngest general in Europe at thirty-three. His use of the Army of Africa to crush the Asturian miners in 1934 fixed him in the eyes of the right as the restorer of order, and in July 1936 he joined the rising, flew from the Canaries to Morocco and, with German and Italian transports, ferried the Army of Africa to the mainland. In October he was made commander-in-chief and head of state of the rebel zone, and the Unification Decree of 1937 fused the Falange and the Carlists into a single National Movement under his personal rule. Victory in 1939 was followed by mass execution and imprisonment under the Law of Political Responsibilities, costing tens of thousands of lives. He declared non-belligerence in the Second World War while sending the Blue Division to the Eastern Front, and broke out of postwar isolation with the Pact of Madrid and the Concordat of 1953. The growth that followed the Stabilization Plan of 1959 became another pillar of the regime; he named Juan Carlos his successor in 1969, and with his death in 1975 the regime itself began to come apart.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1892Born into a naval family in Ferrol, Galicia
- 1907–1910Trained at the Toledo Infantry Academy
- 1912–1926Fought in the colonial war in Morocco, second-in-command of the Spanish Legion, brigadier general at thirty-three
- 1928–1931Director of the Zaragoza military academy until the Republic removed him
- 1934.10Used the Army of Africa to crush the Asturian miners' rising
- 1935–1936Rose to chief of the general staff, then was posted to the Canary Islands by the Popular Front government
- 1936.07.18–19Joined the rising, flew to Morocco in the chartered Dragon Rapide and organized the airlift of the Army of Africa
- 1936.10.01Proclaimed Generalísimo and head of state of the rebel zone at Burgos
- 1937.04.19Fused the Falange and the Carlists into a single National Movement by decree
- 1939.04.01Declared the war over and began mass execution and imprisonment under the Law of Political Responsibilities
- 1940–1943Met Hitler at Hendaye, declared non-belligerence and sent the Blue Division to the Eastern Front
- 1953–1955Signed the Pact of Madrid with the United States and a Concordat with the Vatican; UN membership in 1955 ended his isolation
- 1959Abandoned autarky with the Stabilization Plan and entered the years of high growth
- 1969–1973Named Juan Carlos his successor; in 1973 his prime minister Carrero Blanco was assassinated by ETA
- 1975.11.20Died in Madrid; buried at the Valley of the Fallen until his exhumation in 2019
Related historical events
- 1936–1939The Spanish Civil WarCommander-in-chief and head of state of the rebel zoneAirlifted the Army of Africa to the mainland, turning the rising into a war, and opened thirty-six years of dictatorship after his victory in 1939
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarSent the Blue Division to the Eastern FrontWhile declaring non-belligerence, he sent the Blue Division to the Eastern Front.
The Postwar Repression Apparatus and the Maquis, 1939–1952
After the declaration that the war had ended on 1 April 1939, the regime entrenched its victory in law and administration. The Law of Political Responsibilities, promulgated at Burgos on 13 February 1939, three days after the fall of Catalonia, retroactively declared guilty of "military rebellion" everyone who had belonged to a Popular Front party from 1 October 1934, or had opposed the July 1936 coup. Those who had obeyed the laws of the legal government were now prosecuted for "aiding the rebellion". The law attached economic sanctions ranging from a fine of 100 pesetas to the confiscation of all the accused's assets, along with restrictions on professional activity and freedom of residence and forfeiture of Spanish citizenship; the dead and disappeared could be held responsible, their families inheriting the penalties. Between 1939 and 1945, 500,000 people out of a population of 23 million, two percent of Spain, faced proceedings on political responsibilities. The law was only nominally repealed in April 1945, while the liquidation commission remained in operation until 1966.
Repression was not confined to the statute book. Until 1963 all opponents of the state were brought before military courts, political prisoners were held in concentration camps, and forced labour, camps and execution together turned postwar Spain into what Antony Beevor called "little more than an open prison". After the establishment of Petain's Vichy regime, Republican exiles interned in France were rounded up by the French police and, under an agreement with the Franco government, handed over at Irun and moved to the Miranda de Ebro camp for "purification" under the Law of Political Responsibilities. This mass violence from 1939 to 1945 is known as the Francoist repression. Estimates of its dead vary widely by source and researcher. Stanley Payne puts the number of executions after the war at about 28,000; Paul Preston estimates roughly 20,000 Republicans executed after the end of the war. Antony Beevor and Gabriel Jackson estimate 200,000 victims, from execution and from hunger or illness in prison, between 1939 and 1943, and Michael Richards likewise holds that "as many as 200,000" were executed by the Francoists after the war. Julian Casanova, Josep Fontana and Hugh Thomas, by contrast, put the total death toll of the repression at around 150,000. On any estimate, this was large-scale state violence against opponents, spanning the war and its aftermath.
Surrender was not the end of resistance. The Republican guerrilla Maquis, exiled in France, kept up sabotage and armed action from bases in the Pyrenees, and several exiled Republicans fought in the French resistance against the German occupation in Vichy France. In 1944 a group of Republican veterans from the French resistance entered the Val d'Aran in north-western Catalonia but were quickly defeated; the Maquis' activity continued well into the 1950s. This resistance records a defeated working class and peasantry that did not submit to state violence but kept fighting, and it also shows the limits of an internal counterattack against overwhelming military force and international isolation.