Julián Casanova (Valdealgorfa, Teruel, 1956) has written a book about a single historical figure, the most important of the recent past in Spain, but for a whole year he dedicated himself to reading the biographies of other great characters that he had met. This has been one of the sources that the professor of contemporary history of the University of Zaragoza has used to conceive Francpublished on Wednesday by the Critical Editorial. The succinct title of the book and its cover already advances that this is a biography, a tour of the person and the character that led a terror regime that was imposed for four decades.
With a pleasant prose, Casanova approaches the dictator until he ends up composing a puzzle that is, as he defends, as the story: complex. He does it with a double look: the microscopic, that of Spain, and the telescopic, which moves away from the country to put it in context with the rest of Europe and the world. The result is a thorough portrait of the Galician General that passed through Africa and that despite not being convinced of the uprising ended up assuming all the power and adapting to the international stage. But what Casanova seeks above all is to contribute to the fact that, far from opinions, it is the story that prevails: “It must be possible to look at the past and not seek only approval or condemnation,” he says.
It has been written and written a lot about Franco and there are still many unknown issues. What has led him to bet on the biography now?
This is the culmination of a process thought for a long time. Biography is a different approach to history, which has many streets and directions and it seemed very important to take this. The fundamental challenge was how to narrate it for an audience that they say has not read much and at a time when there is concern about what happens in schools.
Why have you decided to focus on Franco’s figure?
Because the dictatorship is more studied than Franco and because the dictatorship has survived worse than Franco. People think that in the dictatorship there were many ‘pacifiers’ and much enrichment but that Franco does not. The myths work around him, not so much to the dictatorship: he who developed Spain, who invented everything, who freed the country of World War II, that he did not know the executions or corruption .. .
He says at a time since he is aware of how difficult it is to make a biography that is useful for everyone, also even for those who They admire Franco. Is that the goal?
No, there is a part that historians can only explain and that generates much more noise today than at any other time. But if we want to create critical readers who really know the past to see how the present is, we need research, no political opinions. The objective is that the biography serves to expand the understanding of these historical processes, that we are able not to see Franco to put him in a judgment or to anoint it as a envoy of God, but to address the story from the point of view of inquiry.
Franco would have been able to throw at least three fundamental situation and did not happen
It exposes a Franco who before the coup d’etat had military success but not so much political talent and mass mobilizer. How is anyone able to maintain such omnipotent power for four decades?
These are questions about Hitler or Mussolini, but in the case of Franco, not because at the time he has won the war, no one is going to ask for charism or sophisticated aspects. Even so, I say that I had no charisma mobilizing masses, but charisma as a cult of power and personality, yes. Franco has more time and more charisma than Hitler and Mussolini because he’s many years and nobody hangs down head. He dies in bed and is buried as a pharaoh.
How do you explain your survival?
With a combination of national and international aspects. Franco could have thrown at least three fundamental junctures and did not happen: in 39 he has the great advantage that the war wins at the time when the Nazi boot is being imposed throughout Europe and, after all, after all, after all, after all, after all, after all, after all, after all, after all, Germany and Italy have helped him win it. In 45 it has the advantage that the Cold War immediately replaces World War II. And between 46 and 49, the UN denies the entrance and declares illegitimate to the states that have supported Hitler and Mussolini, but internationally allowed to institutionalize Francoism in Spain. From the blessing of the United States, Franco rests.
Before the Franco dictatorship he was a military wrought in Africa who was already a brigade general in 1926 after a fast ascending military career.
Yes, that is like this: it rises and wins a war. Although that does not mean that everything was premeditated and it is important to put it in a comparative perspective. Franco was not an extraordinarily gifted military. There are a lot of military in those moments who participate in World War I and many celebrities in each country. However, there is an alleola around him that his is a unique story that starts from a deep ignorance. One of our great deficits is not only not having studied the dictatorship but the history of Europe. We have despised so much to use the telescope to see what is beyond everything seems peculiar.
Franco did not excel in the early 30s for being a conspirator against the Republic and was not even convinced to hit and even hesitated when the decision had been made. This contrasts a lot with his image of “Salvador de la Patria” built later.
Yes, it contrasts a lot with the reinvention of history. Until June 1936 Franco did not enter the conspiracy. In March, when he went to the Canary Islands, the military had already gathered and Mola, who was the one who was establishing the guidelines, desperate because Franco was on his own, but this was skilled enough for the Dragon Rapide [el avión que le trasladó de Gran Canaria a Marruecos] will reach him.
The great miracle is that a general, who to cover his back sends his daughter and his wife to France in case the coup goes wrong, when he see them again is about to be appointed general of the armies and all military aid Go through him
How did it become a key piece of uprising?
The first paradox is that Azaña appointed him General Commander of the Canary Islands to take it out of the Peninsula. This was an impressive strategic mistake: he was next to Africa, where he had been and where the most effective and wild shock forces of the Spanish army were. From there he wrote to Hitler to ask for help to move on to the Peninsula and that altered the leadership position between him and Mola. Outside it was already said that Franco was the leader and then the church appears, that the glorification of the blessed character begins.
The great miracle is that a general, who to cover his back sends his daughter and his wife to France in case the coup leaves badly, in September, when he see them again, he is already about to be appointed general of the armies and All military aid goes through him. Spain has already changed for him and for millions of people. Nobody writes scripts, nothing is predetermined in history, but it is neither chance, God nor Providence … but a lot of factors that cost us a lot to put on the table because they are complex.
It was in this sense an unexpected leader.
Yes. Especially because what would have happened if Sanjurjo [líder de la sublevación] I wouldn’t have died? Sanjurjo died, Calvo Sotelo and Primo de Rivera died. Franco was not like Stalin and never needed to kill those who hindered him, rivals. And also died then cool also in a plane crash like Sanjurjo. Franco never took a plane.
Among the different factions that supported him there were struggles, divisions, discontent … why still kept him in power?
Because they are not simply families of Catholics, monarchists or phalangists. They are victors of the war. None wanted to give up and everything depended on this and that they had full pockets. Not only of money, but also of status and privilege. There were not four or five, they were a plot from the mayor of any town, the Civil Guard or the priest. Everything passed in the direction of the leader and nobody had to tell them how they had to act. They knew that if they were in Franco’s direction, nothing would happen to them, they were corrupt or whatever.
Franco is very lucky that anticomunism sells at the moment when anti -communism is the fundamental basis of democratic essences
What do we know about your personality?
We know little. We have no letters or conversations. He talked about himself in the third person and marked a lot of distance with his friends. We have also seen this in the biographies of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin: distant with their friends and cruel to their enemies. I have seen all the speeches at the end of the year of Franco and it is clear that what he was doing was always marking direction, although he apparently did nothing. A image like this was built on him because he had a lot of time. His daughter came to say that she did not like war or that repression was very annoyed and her sister Pilar said she was not supporting corruption, or that he himself bought the underpants.
In this sense I think he was a calculator and an ambitious and that he realized that populism was to make us think that nothing was going with him, that he had to convince the people that he was neither a repressor nor a criminal, who did not sign sentences of death, that others did but because there is no choice. Make them think that they were forced to ‘clean’ Spain and that they were in politics because they had to sacrifice for everyone.
While from inside Franco Franco applied its extermination and horror plan and was building a benevolent image of itself through propaganda, from doors outside the dictatorship was surviving changing geopolitical contexts.
Franco has the great luck that he sells anti -communism at the moment when anti -communism is the fundamental basis of democratic essences. Then he reaches agreements with the United States with which the military bases that imply a loss of sovereignty are established. In 1959 Eisenhower visited Spain and the final hug with Franco is the climax of the international blessing of the dictatorship, but then the visits of Nixon and Ford are very important. Without the United States, Franco would not have survived.
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