The memory of Franco still divides the country, 50 years after his death

Celebrations for the 50th^e anniversary of the death of dictator Francisco Franco and the start of the transition to democracy, an initiative of the left-wing government, deeply divide the Spanish political class.

The right-wing opposition thus decided to boycott on Wednesday the first of the ceremonies organized by the executive of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, illustrating the fact that the wounds are still far from being healed, almost half a century after the end of Francoism. At the end of a civil war which lasted three years (1936-1939) and left several hundred thousand dead, General Franco, then an ally of the Nazi regime, governed Spain with an iron fist for 36 years.

Pedro Sánchez, a socialist, announced this initiative in December, indicating that it had the “single objective” of “highlighting the great transformation achieved during this half century of democracy”. He mentioned “more than a hundred events”, indicating that they would take place “our streets, our schools, our universities and our museums”. The full program has not yet been made public.

Chaired by Pedro Sánchez, the first ceremony will take place on Wednesday at the Reina Sofía National Museum in Madrid, which houses Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica”, one of the greatest symbols of the anti-Franco struggle. The Prime Minister’s initiative, however, did not excite the rest of the political class. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the Popular Party (PP), the main right-wing opposition group, considers that it is political opportunism and has the sole aim of diverting public attention from the setbacks by Pedro Sanchez.

This program comes from a government “which, in its desperation, constantly looks to the past,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who decided not to attend Wednesday’s ceremony. The socialists explain this reaction by the origins of the PP, heir to a party (Popular Alliance) founded in 1976 by a former Franco minister.

The “despair” to which Alberto Núñez Feijóo refers is an allusion both to the legal cases for corruption concerning several members of Pedro Sánchez’s entourage, including his wife, and to his delicate political situation in Parliament, where he has not no majority and must bargain for the support of small regional parties to get the slightest bill approved.

Like the PP, the far-right Vox party, the third largest force in the country with 33 deputies, will boycott the ceremony. But criticism against Pedro Sánchez’s initiative also came from the far left, which sees it as a “deception” to hide the fact that Spain, according to it, has not done much in the way of reparations. for the victims of the dictatorship.

Pedro Sánchez passed a “democratic memory law” in 2022, which notably provides for the creation of a register of victims of Francoism and the removal of symbols of the dictatorship. But the law did not allow the torturers still alive to be tried, who benefited from the amnesty law passed during the transition to democracy.

Franco’s political legacy and the civil war continue to divide Spanish public opinion. For Joan María Thomàs, professor of contemporary history at the Rovira i Virgili University, in Catalonia (north-east), and specialist in Francoism, this is due to the fact that the end of the dictatorship in Spain was not ” brutal, like that of the Portuguese, German or Italian dictatorships.

Franco died peacefully on November 20, 1975 at the age of 82 in a hospital in Madrid after a long agony. Two years later, Spain celebrated democratic elections and in 1978 the current Constitution was adopted by referendum. “There was a great agreement, but this agreement was to look to the future,” without dwelling on the injustices of the past, Joan María Thomàs told AFP.

But there exists in Spain “another memory, that of the part of the country which was Franco, and which was a considerable part”, he continued. Remembering the death of Franco, he believes, is a “positive” thing, insofar as the Spaniards “do not fully realize the importance of having regained a democratic regime (…) and to have been able to consolidate it.