Originally posted on my old, old blog http://properspanish.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/spanish-history-101-how-spain-became.html ,
The post is intended to be fun, light reading to give people the basics.
Spanish History 101: How Spain Ended Up With Franco
General Francisco Franco was the dictator of Spain between 1939 and 1975 and he was a complete badass.
How Franco got to power
It all kicked off in 1936. There was a General Election and the left-wing party won. Spain was already pretty liberal at the time (they had votes for women, allowed divorce and that sort of thing), so when the Left won in '36 the Right were pretty pissed and thought that Spain was getting waaaay too liberal for its own good. The Right also blamed liberalness for Spain losing the last of its 'good' colonies in 1898; Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam.
Just after the election, José Calvo Sotelo, head of the Renovación Espanola party, (a right-wing party) and the Leader of the Opposition was assassinated by lefties. So naturally, the Right got even more pissed, so pissed in fact that they decided to lead a coup d'etat.
This coup was led by Franco, who was the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and a very traditional Conservative. He got all the right wing parties together and formed an alliance (called the Nacionalistas) and staged a coup from North Africa (which was owned by Spain at the time).
The problem with the coup was they didn't get control of any of the major cities, except Sevilla, and the lefties (now called the Republicanos) fought back hard. So the coup turned into a Civil War. Which lasted 3 years. I'll do another post about what went down during the war, but so as not to get sidetracked all I'll say is that lots of people died, it was pretty horrific and the Nationalists (Franco) won.
How Franco kept power
Now Franco was a clever little bugger. He had just won the Civil War and was already the head of the Army, so he then made himself Head of Government, Head of State and then, because he could, he made himself the king. Technically he was the "de-facto regent". Which meant he was acting out the role of the king until HE decided to name an heir to the throne.
Spain was a monarchy, and there was a lot of pressure on Franco to reinstate the throne after the war, but Franco didn't like the guy who was supposed to be king, Juan de Bourbon. He was too liberal for Franco's taste, so Franco just made himself the de-facto king, not naming the heir to the throne until he became very old and ill. Franco put his face on the coins and lived in the Pardo Palace (the Spanish equivalent of Buckingham Palace). He also took up the title "Caudillo por la gracia de Dios" (Leader by the grace of God). So Franco was practically untouchable.
And anyone who did want to touch him was killed. He made a law in 1939 saying that anyone who was associated with the Republicans would be imprisoned or killed. This law (called the Law of Political Responsibility) was so harsh that people were imprisoned for simply being related to a Republican. Needless to say, no one dared object to Franco after this. Which is why he lasted so long.
Spain and World War 2
Franco was mates with Mussolini and Hitler. They'd both helped him out in the Civil War (Germany had bombed Gernica for him; partly as a favour to Franco and partly just to test out their new bombing strategies). So when it came time for Germany and Italy to go to war a couple of months after the end of the Spanish Civil war, it was only polite that Franco should help them out.
But he didn't. He stayed well out of it. Spain was crippled after the Civil War and would have been neither use nor ornament to the Fascists. Spain couldn't feed itself, let alone give the Nazis a hand. So Spain stayed officially neutral during WW2. A couple of Spaniards volunteered to join in on both sides, but as a whole Spain tried to keep out of it. In the end this worked out pretty well for Franco as his regime outlived his mates' by a good 30 years.
In part 2 tomorrow: Francoist Spain - the reality