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At first glance, not many suspected that Francisco Franco would become a strongman capable of enforcing a ruthless regime across four decades. He was a short, squeaky-voiced military man with a poor understanding of civilian affairs and zero personal appeal. But he achieved just that, prior to passing away naturally in a Madrid hospital, 50 years ago this week.

The Warning of Outward Mediocrity

Nowadays, Franco acts as a caution that superficial averageness is no barrier to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a elusive, shrewd strategist. His drive was underpinned by an iron will, a glib indifference to brutality and unbounded self-confidence.

Those who praise and defend him – among them on the newly buoyant far right in the Spanish nation, the US and the United Kingdom – still claim Franco was not truly a autocrat, but rather a beloved saviour from Marxism. This is incorrect, but autocrats do not emerge from nowhere.

"A significant portion of any society is made up of people who actively want tyranny," French political theorist Jean-François Revel observed the year after Franco's demise: "either to exercise it themselves or – far more puzzlingly – to submit to it." Franco believed the identical thing: what people really wanted was to experience being ruled.

The Truth of Violence and Oppression

Of course, if Franco had been genuinely popular, there would have been no necessity for his 1936 coup against an democratically chosen progressive administration, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the subsequent civil conflict. Nor would he have shot 20,000 people later.

He seized control in a Spain still slumped in post-imperial ennui – a powerful realm having disappeared the previous century. He aimed to restore Spain's greatness. He accused outsiders. They were either plundering the nation's wealth, plotting against the country as part of a Marxist-Jewish-masonic plot, or corrupting local thoughts with external ideologies: liberal democracy, leftist ideas, communism, and his bizarre bugbear, Freemasonry.

A Calculated, Brutal Conflict

His war was intentionally prolonged and violent behind the lines, accompanied by a bloody purging of dissenters in an attempt to "purify" this tainted Spain. The reimagined nation also had to be a place of allegedly "masculine" men and subservient women, whose rights to their bodies, children, employment and possessions were cut, shelved, or handed over to male relatives.

After a vengeful victory, Franco confined the nation into a corset of self-reliance and discarded the key. Autarky was embraced. International investment and products were shunned. "We possess all necessities," he said.

Starvation and Isolation

But he was wrong. The immediate result was famine, with people perishing in urban areas in 1940 and 1945. While traveling on a victory tour through the towns of Jaén and Málaga, people pleaded at his car window. "Señor Franco, for God’s sake, a piece of bread," they said. Even German representatives in Spain, his supporters, complained that a grandiose facade hid the horrific reality. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the second world war, Franco made Spain a pariah state, but he declined to relinquish power later. The Spanish people 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 lifelong term in charge. A UK diplomat remarked that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", blind to his own ineptitude. Luck, and a lack of any definable ideology, saved him. When the cold war started, he polished his anti-communist credentials and the US restored his reputation.

Consequently, a failing economic system was eventually rescued and compelled to liberalize by the United States and the International Monetary Fund. In the 1960s, Spain was drawn into a southern European economic boom that had started long before in neighboring countries. Suddenly, visitors were pouring on to Spanish beaches at coastal resorts or on the Costa del Sol. Numerous citizens still could not find work, but the money they sent home after moving abroad also helped.

State Terror and Historical Amnesia

He gradually abandoned his most foolish concepts – from establishing a new realm to producing artificial fuel with a "miraculous" formula – but did not relinquish his primary goal of making Spaniards docile, obedient and politically apathetic. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 takeover forward, implemented a strict, Goebbels-inspired press law, and made sure generations of Spaniards were schooled in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing Francoist curriculum. Even into the seventies, independent political parties, democratic voting and trade unions remained banned.

He also treated as children Spaniards, deeming them incapable of self-rule. The scariest part of his heritage was that a large number believed him.

Return to Violence and Medieval Execution

When that fear-driven consensus finally began to fall apart during the last decade of his regime, he reverted to forceful control. Aggressive law enforcement, abuse, execution teams and even that ancient killing method, the garrote, reappeared. The latter saw a metal collar placed around a convict's throat and tightened until it broke their neck or stopped their breathing; it was employed by a European administration on its population, in 1974.

Fear and the Transition to Democracy

Nevertheless, the scholar Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a highly skeptical Franco chronicler, recalls experiencing sorrow as a boy, upon hearing the news that Franco had passed away: "The sadness of that youngster was felt at the time by countless citizens, who believed that the man who had just died had been the optimal answer for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "That is what they said at educational institutions, in the media, on the television … "

The predominant sensation in response to Franco's demise was anxiety. After all, what occurs after the figure at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship dies? Power was initially passed to the monarch Juan Carlos, who oversaw three years of reforms that culminated in a referendum on the democratic constitution that still holds today. Spain remains a vibrant, disputatious democracy.

Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage

Heroic narratives arose to account for this. From the leftist perspective, it was the outcome of activism from courageous demonstrators, students and workers who fought continually with riot police. For the right, it was a sign of institutional prudence. For his supporters, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it constitutes a part of the dictator’s legacy.

And therein lies a problem. In a Madrid printing store where I produced versions of my recent book on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the proprietor kept maintaining that his father claimed to have lived well under Franco. His father remembered, of course, only the prosperity of the 1960s.

The Danger of Ignorance

During the promotion of the local version of the publication, I have also discovered that the issues outlined by María Ramírez about childhood surrounded by silence about the dictatorship are still with us. College attendees inform me that their high school teachers were still avoiding the topic just a year or two ago. As a parent of Spanish youth, that is a major concern.

Lack of knowledge is risky. It is not surprising that nearly 20% youth believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The only way to alter this is to end the quiet and educate the new generation what Francoism was really about.