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Overview
General Francisco Franco came to prominence during the days of David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson and was able to cling to absolute political power until his death in 1975. Over his fifty-year career, he became one of the four dictators who changed the face of Europe during the twentieth century.
Franco joined the Spanish Army when he was barely fifteen years old. In 1926 he became the youngest general in Europe and, driven by an astonishing sense of his own greatness, was recognized as sole military commander of the Nationalist zone during the Spanish Civil War. His ambition was always to hold on to the power that he had secured. In practice, this meant winning the Spanish Civil War and surviving the fall of the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini and the international isolation that followed their defeat.
But behind the military heroics and dexterous political footwork lay an insecure and vengeful man, wracked by contradictory impulses. Although fueled by a single-minded determination to succeed, he was full of self-doubt. A bold and sometimes inspirational soldier in Africa, he became an indecisive, hesitant military commander during the Civil War. Filled with a burning conviction that his destiny was bound up with the medieval kings of Spain and God Himself, he appeared shy, withdrawn, and humble. Ruthlessly intent on wiping out all political opposition, he denied heatedly that he was a dictator. A stubborn man, he could be remarkably flexible when it came to safeguarding his power.
Gabrielle Ashford Hodges' psychological biography considers Franco's mental state, as well as his political motivation. In doing so, it succeeds admirably in getting under the skin of Europe's most enduring dictator.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466856349 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/04/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 793 KB |
About the Author
Gabrielle Ashford Hodges is a writer and historian. She is the author of Franco: A Concise Biography.
Read an Excerpt
Franco
A Concise Biography
By Gabrielle Ashford Hodges
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2000 Gabrielle Ashford HodgesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-5634-9
CHAPTER 1
Small Acorns
Franco and his family, 1892–1910
Rather than the qualities which raised him from the masses, it was those qualities he shared with them and of which he was a representative example that laid the foundations for his success.
Joachim Fest on Adolf Hitler
Francisco Franco Bahamonde was born in the early hours of 4 December 1892 in El Ferrol, a small port in Galicia, in north-western Spain. A tiny tight-knit naval community, it was geographically, and temperamentally, cut off from the rest of Spain: America was considered more accessible than Madrid. Spanish naval ships had sailed from the port of El Ferrol throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to fight against Spain's enemies, particularly the English. El Ferrol's fortunes had waxed and waned alongside Spain's imperial ventures. By the time Franco was born, it was once again enjoying a vicarious if short-lived importance as one of the three Atlantic bases from which Spain was waging war with its remaining Latin American colonies.
Franco's forebears on his father's side had first arrived in El Ferrol in 1737, where they established a tradition of service in the administrative branch of the navy. Franco's great-grandfather was nearing his thirtieth birthday when news of the 'mortal blow' delivered to the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar reached the shocked populace of El Ferrol, home of many of the thousands of sailors who were killed or wounded during the battle. Despite the seniority attained by Franco's ancestors, the virtual caste system that existed within the local naval hierarchy prevented the family from fraternising with the 'real' naval officers in the sea-going sector. What the family lacked in social status, they made up for in fertility and longevity. Franco's great-grandfather, Nicolás Manuel Teodoro Franco y Sanchéz, lived an extremely long life during which he married three times and had fifteen children. He too had entered the administrative branch after 'proving' in 1794 that he was of 'pure blood, of Hidalgo family and a man of property', and rose to the equivalent rank of lieutenant-colonel in the army.
One of his sons, Franco's grandfather Francisco Franco Vietti, did even better. By the time he died in 1887, he had become a director of the Naval Administration in El Ferrol. He managed to buy a house in 'almost the best part of the town', the Calle de Maria (where Franco was born), but even he could not shunt his family up the social scale. He had five sons and two daughters. The eldest, Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo, born in 1855, was to be Francisco Franco's father. Neither Nicolás nor one of his younger sisters, Hermenegilda, brought much credit to the family name. The former horrified the local populace with his zest for women, gambling and drink, while the latter scandalised both her parents and their narrow-minded neighbours by falling passionately in love with a cousin whom she was forbidden to marry. Moving to Corunna, she would, in due course, become godmother to her errant brother's middle son, Francisco, who would regularly visit her house during his childhood. Although 'extremely cultured and well connected with the high society of the city', like her older brother in El Ferrol she was 'very eccentric'. Unlike him, she would never marry. Small, thin and spectacularly mean (as, indeed, was Nicolás), she darted through the streets of the town, with her little old servant walking several steps behind. The family propensity for longevity did not abate over the years. 'Aunt Gilda' died in 1940 at the age of eighty-five. Her brother died two years later aged eighty-eight. Francisco himself would die in 1975 aged eighty-three.
Despite his wild tendencies, Nicolás Franco followed the family tradition and joined the Academy of Naval Administration when he was eighteen. While Nicolás seemed to hanker after a good time rather than professional glory, he was hard working and disciplined, and eventually attained the highest possible rank of intendente-general, or vice-admiral, although this was probably due to length of service rather than professional dynamism. As a young man of twenty-one, he was dispatched to Cuba, where he fully exploited the sexual and social diversions on offer, and then to the Philippines, where he fathered an illegitimate child, Eugenió Franco Puey, with a fourteen-year-old girl. (Years later Eugenió's son-in-law, Hipólito Escobar, would make contact with the Caudillo. To avoid any scandal, he was rapidly promoted from his job as a small-town librarian to become director of the Biblioteca Nacional.) Don Nicolás returned to a parochial El Ferrol only with the greatest reluctance. Unable to fraternise with the elite, sea-faring naval officers and unwilling to share the local preoccupation with 'the arrival of the last ship and the fulfilment of duty and everyday gossip', his capacity for boredom was stretched to snapping point. Nicolás was in need of a diversion.
Perhaps that was why, on 24 May 1890, aged thirty-five, he made the improbable decision to marry the deeply pious, 24-year-old Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade, daughter of the commander in charge of naval equipment in the arsenal. To begin with, Nicolás was doubtless drawn to the young Pilar's 'transparent beauty ... oval, symmetrical face, and pensive melancholy eyes'. He may also have hankered after a stern and critical figure to curtail his unfettered appetites. It was certainly a socially advantageous match, and winning the hand of 'one of the most beautiful and admired women in El Ferrol' 'satisfied his vanity and gratified his narcissism'. However, the egotistical Nicolás could not have chosen somebody more likely to disapprove of his attitudes and lifestyle. He has been described as 'an easy-going man of the world, a rake even' and 'a gay companion, a bibulous amorist with little taste for family life' and with 'a reputation for fast living ... a free-thinking bon-viveur'. In contrast, even as a young woman Pilar was 'conservative, extremely pious, almost a saint'. In his biography of the Caudillo, the eminent psychiatrist Enrique González Duro claimed that Don Nicolás felt trapped in a relationship in which he felt 'insufficiently matched in affection by his wife who was not at all sensual, hardly spontaneous, excessively responsible and completely identified with the traditional role of wife and mother ... much more concerned with appearances than with realities'. Rebelling against his wife's moralistic ways, Don Nicolás would prove to be neither a committed husband nor a devoted father.
The ill-suited couple were to have five children in quick succession: Nicolás was born on 1 July 1891, Francisco on 4 December 1892, Pilar on 27 February 1895, Ramón on 2 April 1896 and Paz, the younger daughter, on 12 November 1898. These five were not their only parental responsibilities. On 25 April 1894, Nicolás's aunt died, leaving her husband with ten children aged between two and sixteen. He named Nicolás, his nephew and a close neighbour, as their guardian. When the uncle died as well, the younger children leant upon Doña Pilar as a second mother. The second youngest, Francisco Franco Salgado-Araujo, or Pacón as he was called, aged four at the time of his mother's death, was extremely fond of Doña Pilar. He would shadow his younger cousin Francisco throughout his long career. His memoirs and diaries, which chronicle their almost daily contact until 1971, provide valuable insights into Franco's early childhood, military achievements and political career.
The most profound influence upon the young Francisco was his relationship with his mother. On the basis of his own – and Pacón's – idealised memories of her, Doña Pilar has been presented by most of Franco's biographers as an almost perfect Madonna-like figure. Franco's friend and first biographer, Joaquín Arrarás, describes her as 'A mistress always of herself, her moral courage strengthened by the intensive life of her spirit, she faced life's problems with a serenity and a fortitude that might be called stoical were they not more aptly described as Christian.' González Duro claims that 'her calmness before suffering was admirable as was her tranquil smile in adversity'. Paul Preston refers to her as 'a gentle, kindly serene woman [who presented to] the world a façade of quiet dignity and religious piety', and Pacón solemnly proclaims that 'her example and her deep-rooted religiosity were of the greatest value in our education'.
In the early 1940s, Franco would write a fanciful account of his childhood, producing an autobiographical film-script entitled Raza, which charts the history of a Galician family from 1897 until the end of the civil war. Although Raza exposes more about Franco's innermost fantasies than his actual childhood, it unwittingly reveals his underlying psychological motivations, his real attitude to his family and how this relationship fed into the prejudices that would underpin his entire political career.
In his film-script, Franco portrays Doña Pilar as the caring, warm and devoted mother, Isabel de Andrade, and insists that 'there is no greater wisdom than that of a good mother who looks to the care and concern of her children'. Given the religious and social constraints within which she lived, the frustrations of her husband and the personality traits of her middle son, it seems unlikely that Doña Pilar was a warm, affectionate or spontaneous wife or mother. Even George Hills, one of Franco's more fulsome biographers, concedes that 'the aloofness, the coldness of the adult Franco, noted so often by men who served under him' must have had their origins in his early family circumstances.
On the surface however, Doña Pilar was the perfect mother. She spent a lot of time praying. Her children were always beautifully attired. Her house was spotless. Whether this was normal behaviour for diligent housewives at that time or was more pathological in origin, it is noteworthy that Francisco would obsessively echo these tendencies throughout his life. Even as a small boy he displayed an unhealthy preoccupation with wearing the correct clothes. Throughout his life, dressing-up would be an aid to his different heroic poses.
Francisco's relationship with his father, although quite different, was equally influential. According to Pacón, Don Nicolás was 'a man of great intelligence' who, like his sister Gilda, had 'a strong character which led him to do what he felt like without worrying what people would say'. Like his middle son, he was full of contradictions. Fun-loving and self-indulgent in the world at large, he was a harsh disciplinarian at home. A political free-thinker with a marked sympathy for the freemasons and profound distaste for religion, he was a tyrannical authoritarian with his children. Although Pacón would fondly recall his guardian taking his sons and their young cousins for long walks and kite flying above the sea in El Ferrol, he acknowledges that he was 'an extremely severe and austere character' who 'never took pride in the merits of his children'. Whether Don Nicolás's egocentric attitude and aggression towards his children was his way of venting the frustrations he felt within his marriage, or an attempt to compensate for his dissolute behaviour outside the home, there is no doubt that his behaviour was unpredictable and extreme.
Although the couple diverged on almost every issue, both Don Nicolás and his wife were determined that his sons should transcend their humble origins and join the 'real', sea-going, navy. Pacón particularly remembers Don Nicolás's 'magnificent teachings on the naval history of El Ferrol', his blow-by-blow account of 'the attack of the English and the landing of a fleet ... on 28 August 1800' and his determination to make 'sure that we learnt everything about naval terminology and technology'. It is perhaps noteworthy that, despite the yearnings of Francisco – or Paquito as he was sometimes called – to impress his father by joining the navy, only his older brother Nicolás fulfilled his father's professional ambitions by becoming a naval engineer. Nevertheless Don Nicolás's passion for Spanish naval history, and his preoccupation with the sea and warships, would exert an enormous influence upon Francisco's life – as would his erratic disciplinary methods.
He regularly beat his three sons. Although he never dared to beat his daughter, Pilar, saying 'I must either kill her or ignore her, and since I could not kill her, I ignored her', she later claimed that he ran 'the house like a general'. In her memoirs Pilar oscillates between indignant protestations that her father's beatings were quite justified, dubious assertions that she had beaten her own children with no ill effect, and bitter memories of Don Nicolás's violence against her brothers. Even Pacón concedes that his guardian was 'always excessively demanding and severe' with his children, and easily lost his temper if contradicted. There were, he records, enough anecdotes about Don Nicolás's ill-tempered ways to fill a book.
In fact, a play was written about Don Nicolás in 1985 by the Spanish dramatist Jaime Salóm. Entitled The Short Flight of the Cock, it is based on the written and spoken testimonials of close friends and associates of the family. Although ostensibly a work of fiction, the play throws considerable light on Franco's father and on his tempestuous relationship with his wife and children. Don Nicolás emerges as a larger-than-life personality who bridled against living in a 'mediocre provincial city inhabited by dull people devoid of imagination' with a wife who was more inclined to 'say a rosary for the blessed souls in Purgatory and our departed loved ones' than spend time with her husband. His wife is portrayed as a cold, moralistic, petty-minded snob. Don Nicolás berates her for being 'still as a marble statue' in bed, protests that 'your virtue and your modesty are only a way of feeling superior to other people' and wistfully recalls that 'I would have given my life for a kiss ... If you understood me just once ...'
Whatever the truth of the matter, it certainly seems to be the case that, far from trying to resolve her marital problems, Doña Pilar invested her energies in trying to shield the family's resolutely lower-middle-class credentials – they were allegedly forced to have lodgers to help out financially – from the probing eyes of provincial neighbours. Despite her Madonna-like reputation, there is, strangely, nothing to suggest that Doña Pilar protected any of her children from her abusive husband. Whether she believed that, tainted by original sin, they deserved everything they got, or simply felt powerless to intervene, her failure to protect her sons from Don Nicolás's wrath may well have been perceived by them as passive collusion, or a frightening symptom of her powerlessness.
While all the children suffered in one way or another, it was the timid, withdrawn and socially conscious Francisco who inspired their father's most overt loathing and derision. His inhibited and cautious personality did little to ignite the fervour of paternal pride or love and made it difficult for him to compete with his charismatic, extrovert, macho brothers. Perhaps his placing within the family compounded his difficulties in forging a role for himself. Nicolás was the oldest child, Ramón the youngest, and – until Francisco was five – Pilar the only daughter. Francisco was just another boy, and a rather unimpressive one at that. Extremely short, skinny and effeminate, with a high-pitched voice and huge reproachful eyes, he clearly unnerved his father. Don Nicolás was much more at ease with his other sons, who were so like him in many ways. On the basis of interviews with Franco's older cousins on both sides of the family, George Hill describes young Nicolás as a 'quick-witted but inattentive student'. He was an irrepressible, confident child who grew into a charismatic, fun-loving, unreliable man. Ramón – fondly remembered as 'naughty, a madcap' – was also blessed with a spontaneity and charm that contrasted strongly with Francisco's stilted personality. A neighbour later observed that 'Ramón got on very well with everyone else. The rest of the family didn't. They thought they were superior.' Another one recalls that Ramón was also 'the most daring, the most cheeky, the father loved him most'. Pilar, a forthright child, was also very like her father. Constantly announcing 'I always did what I wanted, I do what I want, and I'll always do what I want', she was viewed as potentially 'an excellent commander-in-chief had she been a man'. Francisco, on the other hand was a strikingly unremarkable child, a plodder. 'He was meticulous; he was good at drawing but otherwise quite average, quite ordinary.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Franco by Gabrielle Ashford Hodges. Copyright © 2000 Gabrielle Ashford Hodges. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
INTRODUCTION: General Franco - Fact and Fantasy,
CHAPTER 1: Small Acorns Franco and his family, 1892-1910,
CHAPTER 2: The Emergent Hero Africa, 1910-31,
CHAPTER 3: Will You Won't You Join the Dance? The Road to Rebellion, 1931-6,
CHAPTER 4: Mine All Mine Franco and the Civil War, July 1936-March 1937,
CHAPTER 5: Mental Fragmentation, Physical Annihilation, Political Unification March 1937-March 1939,
CHAPTER 6: Do You Wanna Be in My Gang? Franco in Victory, April 1939-December 1940,
CHAPTER 7: Franco for Sale Franco and the Second World War, January 1941-December 1945,
CHAPTER 8: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall April 1945-April 1956,
CHAPTER 9: Pandora's Box April 1956-November 1975,
Epilogue: 'A Sphinx without a Secret',
Notes,
Further Reading,
Index,
Copyright,