Antonio Cazorla Sánchez (Almería, 1963) has been teaching History in Canada for almost 15 years. Professor at Trent University specialized in the social history of Francoism and the dictatorships of the 20th century, Cazorla has been researching for some time the popular perception of the totalitarian regime implemented after the Civil War in Spain and the myths it built to legitimize itself. Author of Franco: biography of the myth and almost a dozen more books, just published Franco’s towns (Galaxia Gutenberg), in which he thoroughly studies Franco’s colonization policy, an unprecedented internal emigration project.
With it, the National Institute of Colonization (INC) created 300 new towns in which peasant and poor families were relocated with the mission of working the land in exchange for a house and a small plot of land that they had to return with interest. But behind it “there was a reality that the propaganda of the moment ignored”: the misery of the agrarian world, the “violent” counter-reform of Francoism in the countryside or the prioritization of the interests of landowners, argues Cazorla, who spends part of his time in grow the only Civil War museum, which is online and which he leads with his partner Adrian Shubert.
What really was Franco’s objective with the colonizing towns?
Give an image of a regime that cares about the people and make it seem like it was a beneficent ruler. Colonization is the great metaphor of what the Franco regime said it was, but never was: it built houses for 30,000 families, which was equivalent to the population that could leave Jaén in a year, in a country in which there were millions of people. extremely poor and thousands dying of hunger. That doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t change the economic dynamics of the countryside, but when Franco appeared there what he said was ‘I’ve come to learn about your problems’ and that, which he would always repeat, created an image that he was someone who cared about the country. town.
Franco was sold as “the great benefactor of the Spanish countryside.” Were his reforms really successful?
The countryside did not interest him at all. What Franco was interested in was strengthening his image, nothing more.
How did the situation in the countryside transcend the Civil War and the dictatorship?
One of the causes of the conflict is the agrarian question. Of the issues that the Republic touched on, land and religion were possibly the most controversial, among other things because in Spain, compared to the rest of Western Europe, the degree of poverty and dispossession of the peasantry was enormous. In the months before the Civil War, more than 200,000 peasants who only wanted a decent life occupied the lands they worked peacefully, but this caused great alarm on the right and later there was a violent counterrevolution by the Francoists to return them to the owners. even killing peasant leaders. The director of the service created by the Falangists to give legal coverage to this process was the same as the future National Institute of Colonization (INC).
The true colonization was not the towns, but the fields around them, already irrigated, which all of us Spaniards have paid for.
He assures that the creation of colonization towns was a way to finance large landowners at the expense of public capital. As?
All the landowners wanted the INC to expropriate their lands because they were rainfed and in reality they took 25 or 30% of the land to settle settlers, but they kept the rest and the INC irrigated it for free. The landowners lost 300 hectares, but the remaining 700, which also tended to be the best, were irrigated and multiplied by between four and ten times their value. Unlike the settlers, who had to return everything with an interest of 5% on average annually, the cost of transforming the landowners’ land was paid by the State. The true colonization was not the towns, but the fields around them, already irrigated, for which all of us Spaniards have paid.
To what extent was this collusion with landowners common?
It was total. They were one of the great supporters of the Franco regime and their policies favored them at a horrible social cost. Thousands of people were dying of hunger in the postwar period, in the first place because salaries were lowered in 1939 to the point that their purchasing power was one third of what they had in 1936. On the other hand, their supply policy meant that most Part of the agricultural production was sold on the black market, in which they persecuted the small smuggler, usually a woman who was a black marketer, but the large landowners were not bothered. Finally, the tax burden in Spain was half that of any other country, so there was no redistribution of wealth.
An example of the waste of Franco’s regime is the nationalization of the railway companies in 1943, whose shareholders were the banks and large Spanish capitalists who had been ruined in the Civil War. But to calculate the money that the State had to pay them, the stock market value of the company at its peak, in 1919, was used. Not only were ruined companies bought at a gold price, but at the price when they were more expensive. That, while there was supposedly no money to feed the people. The Civil War was the victory of capital over labor.
Therefore, out of hope, many people who did not view Franco with such bad eyes were not necessarily right-wing.
Much of the analysis of the conflict leads to economic and class issues. Can we reduce the Civil War to a war against workers?
I don’t know if it was a war against the workers, but I do know that they lost it.
It describes a very harsh and abusive daily reality of the settlers that contrasts with the testimonies of many of those who lived or live in these towns, who are grateful.
The conditions were terrible. Often, upon arriving in the towns they had to live in barracks, huts or corrals, the houses were not finished and the state of the land was poor. In many cases they had hardly any money left at the end of the year because they were also subject to financial demands from the INC, but there are factors that explain the good memory of their people: on the one hand, the great solidarity that existed between neighbors, on the other that at peasants have never been given anything, so having the possibility of accessing land and a house even under those conditions was a gift because they started from very low levels.
Despite everything, Franco had important popular support. You affirm that the propaganda had its effect and also that what it said about him “coincided with what people wanted or needed to hear.” In what sense?
Every society needs to have hope that things will get better. You can see every day that the authorities are corrupt and inept, but you know nothing about Franco nor do you see him beyond one day giving a speech from a balcony. The only information you have is what the propaganda gives you, which says that he is magnificent and cares about you, so, to explain how it is possible that the rest are so bad and Franco so good, you think that what is happening is that He is poorly surrounded and they don’t tell him the truth. You believe that things can only get better if he knows it and that’s why so many people wrote to him asking for things. Therefore, out of hope, many people who did not see him with such bad eyes were not necessarily right-wing. Others needed to pretend, there are those who wrote to him praising him to demand that their father not be shot, for example.
Precisely fear also played a key role…
Yes. Fear creates consensus because it breaks the transmission of memory. Parents do not tell their children things to protect them and themselves, but fear makes people close in on themselves and generates conformity and ignorance. Fear does not allow a critical discourse on power because it is very risky, it silences you and accustoms you to silence and it even makes it possible to internalize many of the values of the regime because it is a survival mechanism.
The left has lacked courage and imagination in matters of public history, in the development of a project to teach people what has happened, which is different from historical memory
Many people’s references are from the Franco era from the 50s or 60s onwards, a period in which economic indices improved and people began to live better. But what is the back room?
They are the dangers of memory. Spain lost almost 25 years of economic progress during the first Franco regime and that was forgotten. It is usually studied that the three pillars of subsequent development were tourism, foreign investment and remittances from emigrants, but it is obvious that there was extreme exploitation of workers who cannot complain because that is what the repressive apparatus is for. However, there is a trivialization of the past, many people believe that Francoism was like Spain today, but with fewer feminists, without nationalists and without immigrants, that is, an ideal past of order and growing well-being that never existed, but was cruel, horrible and discriminatory and there is a lot of ignorance about it.
Why is it still difficult in Spain for a unanimous and unqualified condemnation of Francoism from politics?
Because the Spanish right has never been anti-fascist. Unlike the majority of the European right, the Spanish right is not born from the defeat of fascism but is heir to the evolution of Francoism, so it would have to question its own origin.
Regarding the ignorance about the dictatorship that I spoke about before, should the left engage in self-criticism?
I think so. The left is short-term and has wasted a lot of time. We had a great political hegemony of the left during the time of Felipe González, which was precisely when the great anti-fascist public history projects were being carried out in Europe and here we didn’t even notice. On the other hand, from the current Government I expected faster action on the issue of museums and public history, in the development of a project to teach people what has happened, which is different from historical memory. This is an imprecise concept, loaded with connotations and sectarianism, we can no longer talk about it without certain sectors and politicians getting agitated, but it cannot be confused with historical dissemination, with projects with content decided by specialists, which are not are predefined depending on the governments. There the left lacks courage and imagination
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