Francisco Franco - Franco's Legacy

Franco's Legacy

Further information: Spanish transition to democracy

In Spain and abroad, the legacy of Franco remains controversial. The length of his rule, the suppression of opposition, and the effective propaganda sustained through the years has made a detached evaluation impossible. For 40 years, Spaniards, and particularly children at school were told that Divine Providence had sent him to save Spain from chaos and poverty. With time, the regime evolved and the ferocious oppression of the early 1940s was reduced over the years. The economic success of the latter part of his regime won support from many citizens, who found the dramatic rise in the everyday standard of living more significant than his regime's human rights abuses, although strong anti-Francoist views are held by large numbers of Spaniards to this day.

In 2006, the BBC reported that Maciej Giertych, an MEP of the League of Polish Families, had expressed admiration for Franco, stating that he "guaranteed the maintenance of traditional values in Europe".

Many Spaniards, particularly those who suffered under Franco's rule, have sought to remove official recognition of his regime. Most government buildings and street names that were named after him during his long rule, have been renamed to their original names. Owing to Franco's human rights record, in 2007, the Spanish government banned all public references to the Franco regime and removed any statues, street name and memorials associated with the regime, with reportedly the last statue in Santander having been removed in 2008. Churches which retain plaques commemorating Franco and the victims of his Republican opponents may lose state aid. Since 1978, the national anthem of Spain, the Marcha Real, has not been accompanied by the lyrics introduced by Franco.

In March 2006, the Permanent Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted a resolution "firmly" condemning the "multiple and serious violations" of human rights committed in Spain under the Francoist regime from 1939 to 1975. The resolution was at the initiative of Leo Brincat and of the historian Luis María de Puig, and is the first international official condemnation of the repression enacted by Franco's regime. The resolution also urged to provide public access to historians (professional and amateurs) to the various archives of the Francoist regime, including those of the private Fundación Francisco Franco which, as well as other Francoist archives, remain as of 2006 inaccessible to the public. The Fundación Francisco Franco received various archives from the El Pardo Palace, and is alleged to have sold some of them to private individuals. Furthermore, it urged the Spanish authorities to set up an underground exhibition in the Valle de los Caidos monument, in order to explain the "terrible" conditions in which it was built. Finally, it proposes the construction of monuments to commemorate Franco's victims in Madrid and other important cities.

In Spain, a commission to repair the dignity and restore the memory of the victims of Francoism (Comisión para reparar la dignidad y restituir la memoria de las víctimas del franquismo) was approved in the summer of 2004, and is directed by the socialist vice-president María Teresa Fernández de la Vega.

Recently the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARHM) initiated a systematic search for mass graves of people executed during Franco's regime, which has been supported since the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party`s (PSOE) victory during the 2004 elections by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government. A Ley de la memoria histórica de España (Law on the Historical Memory of Spain) was approved on 28 July 2006 by the Council of Ministers, but it took until 31 October 2007 for the Congress of Deputies to approve an amended version as "The Bill to recognise and extend rights and to establish measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship" (in common parlance still known as Law of Historical Memory). The Senate approved the bill on 10 December 2007. Among other things, the law is supposed to enforce an official recognition of the crimes committed against civilians during the Francoist rule and organize under state supervision the search for mass graves.

The accumulated wealth of Franco's family (including much real estate inherited from Franco, such as the Pazo de Meirás, the Canto del Pico in Torrelodones or the Cornide Palace in the Coruña) has also been discussed. Estimates of the family's wealth have ranged from 350 million to 600 million euros. When Franco was sick, the Cortes voted a pension for his wife, Carmen Polo. At the time of her death in 1988, Carmen Polo was receiving more than 12.5 million pesetas (four million more than Felipe González, then head of the government).