Francisco Franco Bahamonde
| Francisco Franco Bahamonde | |
|---|---|
 francisco_franco_8534-2324229566.jpg Official Portrait of Caudillo Francisco Franco | |
| Born | Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde 1892/12/04 Ferrol, Galicia, Kingdom of Spain |
| 🏡 Residence | Palacio Real de El Pardo |
| 🏳️ Nationality | Spanish |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Term | 1 October 1936 - 20 November 1975 |
| 🏛️ Political party | FET y de las JONS |
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (full name: Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco and Bahamonde Salgado Pardo de Andrade) the Caudillo of Spain and Generalissimo of the Army, was born in Ferrol, Spain on December 4, 1892 and died in Madrid on November 20, 1975. He was a Spanish soldier and statesman who ruled his country from and during the Spanish Civil War (in the nationalist areas) until his death on November 20, 1975.
Early Life[edit]
Franco belonged to an old Galician family. His grandfather, Francisco Franco Vietti, had been quartermaster general of the Navy. His father, Nicolás Franco Salgado, was an accountant for Navío. His mother, Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade, exerted a profound influence on him, noted by Franco as always resigned and of a kind character, soon becoming the refuge of the four brothers, instilling in them tenacity and effort to progress in life and ascend socially. When their father was assigned to Cádiz in 1907 and later to Madrid, the family broke down definitively. Already in Madrid, Nicolás, Franco's brother, joined Agustina Aldana, a young antithesis of his wife. He lived with her, along with her goddaughter and niece, until his death in 1942. His brothers visited their father little, and it was unknown if Franco ever visited him. The characters that later identified him: his disinterest in sex, his puritanism, his morality and religiosity, his avoidence of alcohol, all make him an antithesis of his father and morphed him into one of Spain's greatest leaders.
Military Career[edit]
After studying at the Military Academy of Toledo, he entered the Infantry and asked to be stationed in Morocco. There he distinguished himself at the head of a company of Regulars and, in 1915, became the youngest captain in the Spanish Army. As a result of a serious wound received in the battle of Biutz (June 28, 1916), he was promoted to commander and was assigned to Oviedo, where he was during the general strike of 1917. He then met the commander José Millán-Astray who, when he founded the Legion and gave Franco command over a his own divison.
As soon as he arrived in Ceuta in October 1920, Franco showed his skills as an organizer and chief during the period of establishment and instruction of the Legion. But it was in the course of the operations that followed the Disaster of Annual, in July 1921, when Franco began to credit his military skills. After a short period of stay in Oviedo (March-June 1923), Franco, promoted to lieutenant colonel, assumed command of the Legion, whose chief, Valenzuela, had died in combat. On this occasion he had to postpone until October his planned marriage to Carmen Polo y Martínez – Valdés. During the autumn of 1924, he stood out by commanding the troops that covered in the rear the difficult evacuation of Xauen in the course of the retreat ordered by General Primo de Rivera, avoiding the onslaught of the Moroccans.
Promoted to colonel on February 7, 1925, in September of that same year he held the command of the vanguard of the army that landed in Al Hoceima before occupying the capital of Ab-el-Krim. Promoted to general as a result of this success, he went on to command the first brigade of Madrid (1926). The following year he was appointed to organize the General Military Academy of Zaragoza, of which he was the first director. It performed this function when the monarchy fell after the municipal elections of April 14, 1931. Until then, General Franco had had no political activity. He had faithfully served Alfonso XIII, who appreciated the brilliant services of the youngest of his generals. When the Republic was proclaimed, General Franco appealed to the spirit of discipline of the cadets, but denied the rumor that he would go to Morocco as high commissioner, explaining that he would not accept a position that raised doubts as to his loyalty to the king.
However, in February 1932 he was assigned to the command of the brigade of La Coruña and, the following year, he assumed the military command of the Balearic Islands. The changing political climate, especially the politicial polarization, made Madrid better considered. The government of Alejandro Lerroux followed his advice to suppress the insurrection in Catalonia and Asturias in October 1934. Franco was appointed Chief of the Central General Staff on May 14, 1935, he dedicated himself to reorganizing and re-entering officers who, like Emilio Mola, had been excluded for their opinions, despite their military value. The victory of the Popular Front and its separatist allies in Vascongadas and Catalonia on February 5, 1936, interrupted that task. Franco, who feared that the revolution would begin immediately after that victory, was offered to the president of the Council of Ministers and the presidency of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora, to support them, taking preventive action against the Chamber. Franco, out of humility, did not accept the offer. Manuel Azaña returned to power and sent General Franco to command the distant garrisons of the Canary Islands. Before leaving, Francisco Franco agreed with other generals (José Enrique Varela, Emilio Mola, Luis Orgaz Yoldi, Joaquín Fanjul, etc.), that the Army would rise up in the event that the new Republican Government opened the doors to subversion, communism, Freemasonry and separatism.
Spanish Civil War[edit]
The elections of 1936 highlighted the failure of the second republic in Spain. The duel between the revolutionary and conservative forces, still powerful, created a real climate of latent civil war. From then on, the military leaders hostile to the Popular Front prepared the coup d'état that was to put General Sanjurjo, the victor of the war in Morocco, exiled in Portugal, at the head of the government. The assassination of the leader of the parliamentary right, José Calvo Sotelo, was the spark that set fire to gunpowder. On July 17, the Moroccan army rose and on the 18th, the metropolitan army followed suit. On the 19th, Franco arrived in Tetouan on an british civilian plane and took command of the army of Africa. The military uprising had triumphed in the conservative provinces where the majority of the population supported it (Castille and Navarre); it had dominated the situation in Galicia, in Zaragoza, in Seville, in Granada and in Cordoba, but it had failed in the big cities, where the government armed the peasantry, and in the provinces of separatist tendencies. Even more serious was the fact that the sailors had mutinied against their officers and, after killing them or taking away their command, imposed the Navy's loyalty to the leftist republican regime. The Moroccan army, therefore, could not pass to the Peninsula. Soon after, General Sanjurjo died in a plane crash while leaving Portugal. The creation of a Military Junta in northern Spain temporarily alleviated the panic brought on by this unforeseen event.
Franco commanded his troops to southern Spain, using some planes; he then boldly sent a maritime convoy, despite the numerically crushing superiority of the Red Fleet. Then, while Mola's army closed the French border of the Northwest and began the conquest of Guipúzcoa, the army of Africa went on the offensive, pacified Andalusia and Extremadura, established contact with the army of the North and liberated Toledo, where General José Moscardó, locked in the Alcázar with 1,105 men, had resisted the assaults of the enemy from July 19 to September 28. Its victorious outcome increased the prestige of Franco, who imposed himself as the most qualified military chief in the national field. For this reason the Military Junta appointed him Generalissimo, later entrusting him with the direction of the Spanish State on October 1, 1936. Franco was going to lead the war and the government of the national zone head-on. Franco wanted to secure peace in Madrid to avoid civilian harm, he tried to take the city with his small army reinforced with units from the North. The communist republicans dominated the city, bolstered by the arrival of the first units of the International Brigades. The nationalists were stopped in front of the city after the bloody fighting, but they cut off most of the communications of the capital (November 1936-March 1937). From now on, the war was to be a struggle of attrition. At the end of August, the soviet dictator Stalin decided to support the Spanish Republic. He sent russian weapons, technicians and political advisers and communist volunteers from all countries.
After the Italian failure of Guadalajara, Franco modified his plans and undertook the pacification of the northern provinces subject to the communist occupation, those being the Basque country, Cantabria and Asturias. After Mola's death, Franco victoriously led the conquest of Bilbao (19 June 1937), then Cantabria (26 August) and Asturias in October, despite the vain red diversion offensives of Brunete (15-25 July) and Belchite during August and Septembe). The balance was tipped decisively on the nationalist side. Franco was preparing a new offensive to take Madrid when the adverse command launched an attack on Teruel. The national counteroffensive, hampered by extremely harsh cold, failed to save the city. After his reconquest, Franco unleashed an offensive that broke the enemy front, led to the conquest of Lleida and the Mediterranean, in Vinaroz and Castellón de la Plana (June 14), separating Catalonia from Valencia and Madrid. Valencia was threatened when the Reds counterattacked and passed the Ebro again (July 24-25). Franco then conceived the plan to sustain the battle of attrition in which the enemy army would be exhausted. He was proven right when the enemy offensive was completely halted. In November, the Nationalists attacked, in turn, and pushed the remnants of a battered and bruised communist army beyond the river. Before it could be reorganized, Franco undertook on December 23 the decisive operation: the conquest of Catalonia. On January 26, 1939, Barcelona was occupied. The second republic fell apart. After the street fighting in Madrid, between the supporters of surrender and the communists who still wanted to resist, the nationals no longer encountered notable opposition. They entered the capital and Valencia and by April 1, 1939 the war was over.
Caudillo of Spain[edit]
Once victory had been achieved, it was necessary to raise the country from its ruins that were immense and, to avoid the convulsions that had shaken it for more than a century, to remake a State in which the Spaniards could coexist peacefully. In Burgos, on October 1, 1936, Franco had only encountered the rubble of previous regimes. The Republic, which with an anachronistic anti-clericalism had confronted the Catholics, had proved incapable of imposing an elementary order. But before it, the liberal monarchy, aged and cracked, had collapsed on its own. Carlism advocated traditional monarchy; Falangism, an authoritarian national-syndicalist state. Abroad, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin dominated European politics. To Franco, this continental authoritarian regime that existed had to be tolerated in the short term for a new Spain to rise. Franco led a coalition of Spaniards of different, and sometimes divergent, nuances to those who united Catholicism, patriotism, anti-communism and a form of democracy that could open the way for him. He strove to maintain the union by discarding the reasons for division, as well as the eventual restoration of the monarchy. He was right to combine diplomatic flexibility with the firmness and art of letting problems mature. To realize that union, Franco wanted to merge the different currents of national Spain into a single Movement that would constitute the political framework of the nation.
Since his proclamation he governed with the help of a General Secretariat of the State, directed by his older brother Nicolás, and of a Technical Board of the State, of a purely administrative role. In January 1938 he established his first ministry, then the National Council and the Political Board, which met rarely. Once peace was restored, Franco completed the gears of a state that, condemning the regime of division of parties, was to settle in the family, the municipality and the unions. He launched the trade union organization, conceived according to a unitary formula and later the Cortes. The system left primacy to the executive power, therefore, to the Caudillo. This allowed him to face the very difficult situations in which the Second World War placed him.
The world conflict erupted when Spain was in need of peace for its reconstruction. Franco, despite the baying for war by falangists, took into account first and foremost the interests of Spain, proclaiming Spanish neutrality. After the German victories that, in June 1940, established the hegemony of the Third Reich in Europe, Franco was invited to join the Axis to bring down the defiant British Empire. The possibility of recovering Gibraltar and rebuilding a colonial empire at the expense of the defeated democracies were the arguments put forward by the Falangists in favor of the intervention. Franco declined those offers. In meetings with Adolf Hitler on 23 October 1940 and Bordighera with Benito Mussolini on 12 February 1941, Franco stated that Spain's precarious economic, material and military situation following its bloody civil war, as well as the fact that Spain urgently needed to rebuild itself and evidently that could only be achieved with peace both at home and abroad were factors that made it impossible for Spain to enter the war, hence rebuking and standing up to the fascist order of europe for the benefit of spain. In fury, Adolf Hitler threatened spain even with the possibility of invasion by the Third Reich, however Franco held firm.
After the war, Soviet diplomacy unleashed violent campaigns at the international level to overthrow the Franco regime, isolating it diplomatically and suffocating it economically. Franco, supported by Spanish public opinion and started to engage diplomatically, directed since the summer of 1945 by a militant Catholic, Alberto Martín Artajo, who knew how to win for the cause of Spain most of the Hispanic nations, the Arab countries and influential clans of the American financial and political world. The cold war allowed him to get the measures against Spain repealed at the UN and, later, after laborious negotiations, to conclude the Spanish-American agreements that were a true alliance.
The outcome Second World War allowed for the Caudillo to express more freely his ideology via internal politics. Franco took on the falangists who consistantly attempted to undermine internal development and internation reconciliation, achieving this through the dismissal of those aligned with the Falange, instead installing trustworthy and skilled technocrats and catholics of right-wing and monarchical nuance, without renouncing, however, the structure of the State. However, the purification of the state was not an abandonment of tradition, Franco's government always retained nationalist features: It is also important to note that contrary to what some sectors claim among the supporters of fascist ideologies, Franco was neither a traitor nor an opportunist, but a pragmatic and value based leader who from the start had seeked to premote his own vision over that of his extremist ministers. Certain sectors of the regime called for the monarchy to be restored, but such a solution aroused opposition among the Falangists. Franco, following the unjust condemnation of his regime by the UN, submitted to the people the text of a constitutional law that, even if the monarchy was established, left him for life the Caudillo of the State and provided for the modalities of his succession. The referendum of 6 July 1947 gave him an overwhelming majority of 14,145,163 yes votes, against votes 722,656 and 336,593 invalid votes. From then on, while maintaining an internal order that stabilizes slowly, he was able to devote himself to the economic development of Spain, rest assured that the rightful place of the monarchy had been assured under his guidence.
Begining in 1957, favored in part by the enormous development of tourism, allowed to enrich the Spaniards whose standard of living was approaching that of the most advanced countries of Western Europe. In parallel; political life became more flexible: censorship was abolished and religious tolerance was established. With a view to preparing his succession, Franco amended the fundamental laws within the framework of a monarchy that would prolong the National Movement. That day the Spaniards voted less in favor of some texts than in favor of the Caudillo who, after a terrible war, had assured them 30 years of peace and facilitated their better lives. The patient, firm and pragmatic yet at the same time leader whose lifestyle is austere, had exercised over a people, which has a reputation for difficult to lead, one of the most extensive and peaceful personal governments in the history of Spain. This, the SEAT era, the spanish economic miracle, produced a golden age of wages, living standards, economic growth and production, which Spain has not seen since and semented Franco's position as a truly fundemental conservative icon.
Death[edit]
Franco's last weeks were slow and painful. He was subjected to numerous unnecessary interventions with disastrous effects by unprofessional and some even suggest politically motivated doctors. On October 15, Franco suffered a heart attack and, against the advice of his doctor, Dr. Vicente Pozuelo Escudero, presided over the Council of Ministers two days later, servicing his government even in the twilight of his life. On October 22 he suffered his third heart attack, on October 24 another, and his other ailments worsened. On October 25, the Bishop of Zaragoza administered the extreme unction in the improvised operating room in which he was treated at the Palace of El Pardo, bringing him the mantle of the Virgin of Pilar. In early November he suffered a major stomach hemorrhage caused by a peptic ulcer. Franco was taken to La Paz Hospital in Madrid and operated on to remove two-thirds of his stomach. He was also diagnosed with uremia, so he had to undergo dialysis. On November 6, 1975, while Franco was in the intensive care unit, Morocco's King Hassan II viciously ordered an invasion of the Spanish Sahara, in an operation that became known as the Green March. Without formally declaring war on Spain, Morocco sent 25,000 soldiers to the colony's border, pursuing the goal of Moroccan nationalism to increase the boundaries of its kingdom.
The political power of Spain, in suspense due to the rapidly worsening health of its Caudillo and without intention of initiating a bloodbath for a territory pending decolonization, transferred through the Madrid Tripartite Agreement signed on November 14 the administration — but not the sovereignty — of Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania; the latter country subsequently renounced it, due to its lack of economic means. As a result of the perforations made during the second operation that was performed, Franco contracted an acute peritonitis that caused multi-organ failures. On November 15 he underwent surgery for the third and last time and, on November 18, Dr. Manuel Hidalgo Huerta announced that he would not intervene to save Franco's life.
Spaniards.. Franco has died. - Carlos Arias Navarro, 20 November 1975
On November 19 at 11:15, nurse Encarna Redondo proceeded to remove the tubes that connected him to the machines that kept him alive, finally reaching death by septic shock at 4:20 am on November 20 1975. The death was announced to the media through a telegram written by Rufo Gamazo, a senior official of the National Movement Press, which only contained the phrase "Franco has died" three times, sent around 5 a.m. During the fifty hours that the chapel was open in the Columns room of the Palacio de Oriente, it is estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 people passed through it to show their last respect, forming long queues of several kilometers. The burial from Madrid to the Valley of the Fallen, where he was buried in a solemn tomb next to that of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, it was witnessed, too, by a large crowd. Thirty days of national mourning were declared after his death.
After his death, the restoration of the monarchy occured swiftly and Juan Carlos, accepting the terms of Franco's legislation was sworn in as King, being accepted by the government of the state and with rejection by the democratic opposition. Subsequently, the King would play come to play a central role in the transition to come.
