It’s not often that a country can solve a serious, endemic problem quickly, easily and at no expense at all. But Spain can.
The problem is some of the country’s left-wing politicians’ harmful ignorance of Spain’s 20th century history – and in particular about what actually happened during the Second Republic (1931-1936) and the resulting civil war (1936-1939). Not knowing the history, they constantly frame 21st century Spanish politics as a continuation of that war. Their misunderstandings and misrepresentations are holding Spain back.
Unfortunately, many on the left fondly imagine that they are the proud heirs of noble republicans who fought for democracy against General Franco’s fascist forces. And when politicians of the two right-wing parties, the Partido Popular and Vox, point out that in fact those republicans themselves can hardly be regarded as freedom-loving democrats, they are immediately condemned as beyond the pale ‘Franco apologists’. Yet both right-wing parties are in fact staunch defenders of Spain’s democratic constitution.
All of Spain’s politicians should read The Penguin History of Modern Spain. Published in 2023, the author, Nigel Townson, points out that not only were the republicans also guilty of horrific atrocities and the systematic elimination of tens of thousands of political opponents during their reign of terror, but must share some of the blame for the civil war itself too:
To defend the [republican] government …on the grounds that it was ‘democratically elected’ is to ignore the extent to which the authorities of 1936 had failed to uphold law and order or to govern in a democratic manner … their politics of exclusion had alienated … swathes of Spanish society…who… feared for their properties and even their lives.
It’s likely indeed that if the republicans, aided as they were by the Soviet Union, had won, Spain would have endured a communist regime.
Yet when the problems of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez become particularly acute – at present he’s mired in corruption cases involving, amongst others, his wife and brother – he seems to find the civil war, Franco’s dictatorship and the importance of defending Spain from the return of fascism a very convenient distraction. His latest idea is to hold more than a hundred acts throughout 2025 commemorating Franco’s death (on 20 November 1975) and celebrating ‘50 years of freedom’. Declining to attend the first of these (on 8 January), Alberto Feijóo, leader of the right-wing opposition said: ‘The socialists are nostalgic for the days of confrontation between Spaniards but that will not prevent the rest of us from wanting to build a future together.’
In his eagerness to present himself as a safeguard against the ‘far-right’, Sánchez is again displaying his ignorance: Franco’s death was not immediately followed by democracy and freedom. Instead power passed to Franco’s hard-line henchman Arias Navarro, known as ‘The Butcher of Málaga’ for the atrocities he perpetrated during the civil war. Nothing to celebrate there, surely? It wasn’t in fact until June 1977 that democratic elections were held. So 2027 (and not 2025) is the year in which to celebrate ‘50 years of freedom’.
Last April, as the investigation into his wife’s alleged corruption started to gather pace, Sánchez announced that he was going to take a five-day break from his duties so that he could decide whether he wanted to continue as prime minister. Imploring him to stay, his supporters promptly resorted to their default playbook – invoking the Civil War and Franco’s ensuing dictatorship (1939-1975). One minister recalled how his grandfather ‘was arrested in 1939, they [the right] wanted to kill him. He was lucky because a friend got him out of the truck. He spent three years in prison… He lived a life of misery … You cannot give up, Pedro.’ Another prominent socialist urged Sánchez ‘to think of the people who [during and after the civil war] died in the ditches, of the people who were executed against cemetery walls, of all those who suffered exile, repression, imprisonment’.
Ironically Sánchez’s government has declared that schoolchildren should learn the truth about what happened in the 1930s. It’s a great shame then that Townson’s excellent book isn’t available in Spanish. But fortunately Sánchez can read English. Perhaps next time he feels in need of time out from running the country, he could spend a few days reading some actual history. He’d be doing his country a favour.
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