One Step Closer To a Believable Francisco Franco Bahamonde

More has been written about the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) than any other conflict in the 20th century. Such historical fixation can no doubt be attributed firstly to the grim spectacle of a nation convulsed by unspeakable carnage and ideological retribution, but ultimately to what many foresaw as impending doom for other more powerful countries than Spain vying for the largest stake imaginable, that of global hegemony. Germany, Italy, Russia, Britain, France and the United States all played significant roles in the Spanish war; the first three, in fact, became near protagonists, and Germany and Italy tipped the balance to such an extent that, once committed to Franco’s Nationalist side, the outcome was hardly ever in doubt.

Every historical event of such magnitude has its heroes as well as its villains, the former chosen from among the victors, and the latter fingered from among the vanquished by those same victors. And yet the Spanish Civil War, as in so many other ways (eg., a civil conflict with international combatants), turns out counter to such expectations. Here, a single individual has been made to play both roles by all of the critics and historians who’ve dedicated major portions of their lives and writings to the subject. Other than the implicated foreign leaders, readily characterized by universal consensus (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin on one side and Churchill and FDR on the other), Francisco Franco (1892–1975) has been portrayed, alternately, as either the most demonized or the most lionized European leader of recent memory.

In the course of half a century of scholarship, time and again, Stanley Payne has authored some of the most significant volumes about Spain and its dominant political figures, among them Franco. His titles include: Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism (1961), Politics and the Military in Modern Spain (1967), The Spanish Revolution (1970), A History of Spain and Portugal (1973), Basque Nationalism (1975), Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980), Spanish Catholicism (1984), and the immediate forerunner to the present volume, published in 1987, The Franco Regime (1936–1975). Here, Payne, in collaboration with the Spanish historian and journalist Jesús Palacios, returns to his favorite subject with a balanced, sober, and well documented account of Spain’s longest and most notorious head of state since Philip II’s sixteenth century reign. The Hapsburg King’s tomb rests in the monumental palace of El Escorial, which he ordered erected (1563–1584) to commemorate the victory of the Battle of San Quintín. It parallels Franco’s own folly when he ordered an equally outsized basilica, the Valley of the Fallen, a scant ten kilometers away. Forty thousand Civil War casualties lay buried there, among them José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange and Franco’s formidable rival. Franco himself, of course, is the only occupant of the mausoleum who died in bed decades later.

Three major contributing factors may explain this volume’s ring of historical veracity. First, its double authorship, by an admired American scholar of unquestioned stature and amazing productivity and by a respected and seasoned Spanish journalist and educator, which lend it a balanced and thus less biased version of Franco and his regime. Secondly, the passage of time itself—75 years since the end of the Civil War and 39 since Franco’s death—which attenuates the passions of those directly and indirectly involved in both the three-year conflict and its four-decade long authoritarian aftermath. And thirdly, the accessibility to key archives finally open to researchers, as well as the willingness of those individuals close to the dictator to offer oral testimony, including his daughter and members of his retinue, who were previously unable to speak freely.

Exemplary for their clarity and the dispassionate portrayal of a modern day dictator, Franco. A Personal and Political Biography’s twenty chapters plus conclusion are chronologically ordered, and accompanied by nearly one hundred pages of notes and a comprehensive index. The very...