Wasn’t Franco a Fascist? Read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Keystone cops-like civil war. Couldn’t understand how one could risk his life fighting for and with incompetents. Was Franco a bad guy in those battles?
I would argue that he was not. I think for Franco, fascism was a scam. A way to get military aid from Mussolini and Hitler. He was more of a caudillo - a military dictator.
Franco's first cabinet, after the end of the civil war, had only two members of the Felange, the fascist party. Fascism, real fascism as opposed to "I disagree with you so you are a fascist" fascism, is anti-clerical but Franco supported the church. When he died, he willed leadership of the country to King Juan Carlos, not to the the leaders of the Felange. (Juan Carlos promptly declared a constitutional monarchy, put a parliament in place and assumed ceremonial duties.)
Under Franco Spain's economic system was arguably fascist - state control of education, natural monopolies and the means of propaganda but there wasn't a great emphasis placed on the regulation of industries or monopolization except maybe in the arms and aerospace industries.
That is the way he is portrayed (because he was a Fascist and to all Progressives, leftists and liberals, all Fascists can only be of the right...that’s how limited their thinking is).
Franco actually saw the threat from Germany and realized that if he allowed the country to be embroiled in constant infighting between different socialist factions or if any one of those factions won, that Spain would be too weak to resist what would become a NAZI invasion.
There is a reason that the NAZIs didn’t invade Spain. The Pyrenees is only part of that reason (and the smaller part).
Franco kept Spain under control and protected it from NAZI invasion.
“Wasn’t Franco a Fascist? Read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Keystone cops-like civil war. Couldn’t understand how one could risk his life fighting for and with incompetents. Was Franco a bad guy in those battles?”
Franco was fighting communists.
Watch the movie `Pan’s Labyrinth’ (from a book for kids) if you want to see a cartoonish Hollywood portrayal of Franco’s blood-drinking fascists (Republicans) in the Spanish Civil War.
Today just sub `conservatives’ for `fascists’ and, well, here we are!
That movie is almost as side-splitting funny as `Inglorious Basterds’ where Eli Roth really steals the show as the most risible (playing some sort of Al Capone/Negin amalgamation) of yet another bunch of tools in yet another hack revisionist/revanchist Hollywood made-for-cable Shoahtime special. While Brad Pitt gets to do his redneck impression for his sheckels.