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Initially, not many suspected that Francisco Franco might become a strongman capable of enforcing a brutal dictatorship over four decades. He was a short, high-pitched military man with a poor understanding of civilian affairs and little personal appeal. Yet he achieved just that, prior to succumbing to natural causes in a hospital in Madrid, 50 years ago this week.

The Warning of Outward Mediocrity

Nowadays, Franco acts as a warning that superficial averageness is not an obstacle to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a slippery, clever operator. His drive was underpinned by an iron will, a casual disregard to brutality and limitless self-confidence.

Those who praise and defend him – including some on the resurgent far right in Spain, the United States and the UK – continue to assert Franco was not truly a dictator, but rather a beloved saviour from communism. They are wrong, but dictators do not emerge from thin air.

"Some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny," French political theorist Jean-François Revel noted the following year Franco's death: "to wield it personally or – far more puzzlingly – to submit to it." He thought the identical thing: the true desire of people was to see and feel themselves governed.

The Reality of Violence and Oppression

Naturally, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no necessity for his 1936 military insurrection against an democratically chosen progressive administration, or for the half a million dead of the ensuing Spanish civil war. He would not have executed 20,000 individuals afterwards.

Franco grabbed power in a Spain still slumped in post-empire lethargy – a mighty empire having disappeared the century before. Franco wanted to restore Spain's greatness. He blamed foreigners. They were plundering the nation's wealth, plotting against the country as part of a conspiracy theory, or poisoning Spanish minds with external ideologies: liberal democracy, socialism, Marxist doctrine, and his strange obsession, Freemasonry.

A Deliberately Slow and Violent War

His war was deliberately slow and brutal in occupied areas, accompanied by a ruthless elimination of opponents in an attempt to "cleanse" this tainted Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of supposedly "masculine" men and obedient women, whose rights to their bodies, children, work and property were cut, postponed, or handed over to male relatives.

After a vengeful victory, Franco locked Spain into a straitjacket of autarky and discarded the key. Autarky was adopted. International investment and products were avoided. "We possess all necessities," he said.

Starvation and Isolation

However, this was incorrect. The direct outcome was famine, with people perishing in urban areas in the early and mid-1940s. As he drove on a triumphal journey through the towns of southern regions, people begged at his car window. "Señor Franco, for God’s sake, a piece of bread," they said. Even Nazi officials in Spain, his supporters, protested that a impressive exterior hid the ghastly truth. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the second world war, Franco made Spain a pariah state, but he declined to relinquish power later. Spaniards sank further into suffering.

Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation

His belief that he was both selected by God and always right meant he insisted on a permanent rule in charge. A British ambassador complained that he lived in a "thick fog of self-satisfaction", unaware of his own ineptitude. Fortune, and a absence of clear doctrine, saved him. As the Cold War began, he polished his opposition to communism and the US restored his reputation.

As a result, a failing economic system was ultimately saved and forced to open up by the United States and the IMF. During the sixties, Spain was swept into a regional economic growth that had started long before in neighboring countries. Suddenly, tourists were pouring on to Spanish beaches at Benidorm or on the Costa del Sol. Many Spaniards still could not find work, but the remittances after emigrating to northern Europe also provided relief.

Authoritarian Control and Forgotten History

Franco quietly dropped his most stupid ideas – from founding a new empire to making synthetic gasoline with a "magic" formula – but never abandoned his central aim of making Spaniards tame, obedient and politically apathetic. He devoted extensive resources in government intimidation from the 1936 takeover forward, implemented a rigid, Goebbels-inspired press law, and made sure multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and historically amnesiac Francoist curriculum. Even into the seventies, autonomous political groups, free and fair elections and labor organizations remained prohibited.

Franco also infantilised Spaniards, deeming them incapable of governing themselves. The most frightening aspect of his legacy was that so many believed him.

Reversion to Brutality and Ancient Methods

Once that fear-based agreement finally began to fall apart during the final years of his regime, he reverted to forceful control. Trigger-happy police, abuse, execution teams and even that ancient killing method, the strangulation device, returned. This method saw a metal collar fastened around a convict's throat and constricted until it snapped their spine or stopped their breathing; it was employed by a western European government on its population, in 1974.

Fear and the Transition to Democracy

However, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco biographer, recalls feeling sad as a child, upon learning that Franco had died: "The sadness of that youngster was felt at the time by countless citizens, who thought that the man who had just died had been the best possible solution for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "This was the narrative at school, in the press, on the television … "

The predominant sensation in reaction to Franco's demise was anxiety. After all, what happens after the figure at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship dies? Authority was transferred to the monarch Juan Carlos, who supervised three years of reforms that culminated in a referendum on the founding document that remains in effect. The country continues as a dynamic, contentious democratic state.

Heroic Narratives and Twisted Legacies

Heroic narratives emerged to account for this. From the leftist perspective, it was the outcome of activism from brave street protesters, youth and workers who clashed repeatedly with riot police. From the conservative view, it was a indication of institutional prudence. For his supporters, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it constitutes a part of the autocrat's heritage.

And here rests a issue. At the Madrid copy shop where I produced drafts of my latest publication on the dictator, the leader, the proprietor kept maintaining that his father stated he had prospered under Franco. His parent recalled, naturally, only the economic boom of the sixties.

The Danger of Ignorance

While promoting the local version of the book, I have also discovered that the issues described by María Ramírez about childhood amid quiet about the dictatorship are still present. University students inform me that their secondary educators were still skirting around the topic recently. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a huge worry.

Lack of knowledge is dangerous. It is not surprising that almost one in five youth believe his dictatorship was good for Spain. The sole method to change that is to break the silence and educate the new generation what Francoism was really about.