Francisco Franco biography

Dictatorship: Post-WWII

After the war came to an end, Franco, traditionally pro-monarchist, found himself under pressure to restore the monarchy. So in 1947, Franco announced a referendum to establish Spain as a monarchy while at the same time confirming himself as lifetime regent. The following year, Franco began supervising the education of Juan Carlos, the future king of Spain, at the age of 10 (in 1969, Franco would officially name Carlos as his successor upon his death).

Franco ruled at arm’s length,

but with total self-confidence, and he began liberalizing domestic policies and softening some of the powers that would normally be associated with a police state. Also, in 1943, Franco changed the status of Falange Española Tradicionalista (the state party) from a “party” to a “movement,” and with the switch much of its original quasi-fascist identity was lost. These changes, paired with his strong anticommunist image, made him popular with the government of the United States, and in 1950 Spain was asked to join the United Nations. Further, in 1953, Franco signed an agreement that brought his regime under NATO protection from foreign invasion. (That same year, the Vatican confirmed the church's recognition of Franco's legitimacy.)

Final Years

By the 1960s, Spain was experiencing a period of expanded economic development and further advancement in progressive domestic policy, and Franco was viewed more as an elder statesman than as a fascist dictator. The 1960s also marked a decline in Franco’s health, and he announced that after his death, Prince Juan Carlos, the grandson of Spain’s last ruling king, would be his successor and would maintain the basic structure of his administration.

But after Franco’s death in 1975, at the age of 83, Juan Carlos moved to dismantle many institutions of Franco’s system and revived the democratic constitutional monarchy system from the pre-Franco days, essentially wiping Spain’s slate clean of much of Franco’s influence within three years of his death.

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