Spain under Franco - lessons for Poland?

I have just re-read Spain Under Franco a history by Max Gallo. The story of Francisco Franco and the Spain he ran from the end of the Civil War in 1939 right up to his death in 1975 is interesting.

The Civil War which Franco's nationalists won, was essentially a military reaction against the Spanish Republic, a brief chaotic period during which downtrodden peasants and factory workers - among Europe's poorest - felt they had a chance to wrest some power from the traditional dominance of the landowners, bosses and clergy. With the Civil War - a messy coup that took over two and half years to complete - came terror - the Red Terror (Republicans slaughtering Nationalist supporters including thousands of clergymen), and the White Terror (Nationalists slaughtering Republican sympathisers). Because the Nationalists won, the scale of their terror was some three-four times greater in terms of its victims.

Anti-clericalism played a key part in the Red Terror. The Church had supported the status quo, the landowners, the aristocracy. If you were poor, you needed to accept that it was your lot in life. The consequent violence meted out to Catholics in Republic-held areas drove many into the arms of Franco's nationalists.

Franco was a traditionalist; nationalist indeed and deeply Catholic - and that just about sums up his ideology, other than he was against socialism, communism, liberalism, atheism, modernism. He was "a firm believer in the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy - a conspiracy in which Jews and Freemasons, and leftists, notionally sought the destruction of Christian Europe, with Spain as a principal target", to quote from the Wikipedia page. He was not a Fascist (though he found it convenient to include the Falange in his government), nor was he a National Socialist.

After coming to power, the main aim for the remaining 36 years of his life was to retain power.

In April 1945, the situation looked bleak for Franco. The two men who helped him win the Civil War were no longer in power. Hitler had taken his life and Mussolini was dangling upside down from a meat-hook. The newly-formed United Nations did not want Franco's Spain for a member. Spain's economy after 1945 was in tatters. Six years after the end of the Civil War, grinding poverty, hunger and corruption were endemic, industrial and agricultural production were at pre-1913 levels. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the imprisonment or emigration of many thousands more, left the country in a feeble state. Over 60% of Spain's GDP was spent on the military and security services. [For an idea of what Spain looked like at that time, google images for "Eugene Smith" + "Spanish Village", the photographer's reportage for Life magazine in 1950.]

In the late 1940s, Franco's prospects suddenly looked much brighter. The Iron Curtain was sliding into place, and Franco, for a change, found himself on the side of the good guys. And so, for American and Western European consumption, Spain became an important bastion against Godless communism, propped up by billions of American dollars, courtesy of the Marshall Plan. For domestic consumption, however, Spain was still an important bastion against Godless communism, and democracy, liberalism, materialism, freedom of expression and modernity.

Spain's economy only really got going in 1959 when money from American aid, foreign direct investment and holiday-makers from north-west Europe pulled it out of autarky and nudged it into the globalising mainstream. By then, Franco was old and tired, leaving economic affairs, which he did not truly understand, to young technocrats and the men from the IMF and World Bank.

He died in 1975; fortunately, Spain had a royal family and a bloodless transition from dictatorship to constitutional monarchy ensued.

Spain is a fascinating country; it had a huge colonial empire and yet by the early 20th Century it was one of Europe's poorest economies. There are many interesting historical and political parallels for Poland. Max Gallo's book explains how one man managed to keep hold of a major European state for so long - much of it was down to luck.