This general was the most successful fascist in the world

For more than four decades, their graves lay right next to each other, in front of the altar of the gigantic cave church Basilica de Santa Cruz, about 45 kilometers north-west of Madrid: the mortal remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the fascist movement Falange, were transferred here in 1959; the body of his successor Francisco Franco was buried by the Spaniards three days after his death in 1975 in a gigantic state funeral. It was only in 2019 that the bones of the longtime dictator were exhumed and buried in a family grave in a normal cemetery.

Of course, it's just a coincidence that Primo de Rivera and Franco died on the same date: November 20th. The Falangist leader was sentenced to death for treason and executed; the dictator was declared dead by his doctors after several heart attacks after days of no measurable activity in his brain.

The decades-long juxtaposition of the two graves was already a lie because Primo de Rivera thought little or nothing of Franco. In fact, relations between the two were never good. The Falangist chief had refused to list the general's name alongside his on a list of candidates; Franco did not forgive him for this attitude. But the death of Primo de Rivera enabled Franco to establish himself as leader of Spain's far-right extremists. This is how he rose to become the most successful fascist of all time.

The later dictator was born on December 4, 1892 into the family of a Spanish naval officer. His childhood was unhappy; his parents separated after a long argument when he was 14 years old. The boy also wanted to be an officer and attended the infantry academy in Toledo. His success was only manageable: he completed the basic course as only 251st out of 312 participants.

For this he distinguished himself in his first missions in Spanish colonies in North Africa. With merciless severity, he formed a unit of local mercenaries into a powerful force. In a battle with insurgents in 1916, he was critically injured and was considered a war hero from then on.

In the heated political strife in Spain in the early 1930s, Franco alternated his position between the monarchist wing and the rational republicans, who were willing to sacrifice the king in order to preserve as much of the established traditions as possible. But he turned relentlessly against the anarchists and socialists.

From 1934 Franco was chief of staff and thus supreme commander of the Spanish army. At the same time, the fascist Falange Primo de Riveras rose from being a splinter party to a force to be taken seriously. When in February 1936 the left forces of the Popular Front narrowly but unequivocally won the elections (with 4.65 to 4.5 million valid votes), this became the signal for the coup d'etat. On July 17, 1936, the uprising began, led by three generals, including Franco.

At the time, Primo de Rivera was already in prison for possession of a gun. From here, however, he openly confessed to the putschists and thus fulfilled the criminal offense of high treason. Apparently he hadn't expected that the takeover of power by the Catholic-conservative military would take too long.

In fact, however, a two-and-a-half-year, very cruel civil war began. The Popular Front, supported by Stalin's Soviet Union and International Brigades, committed numerous crimes against opponents and church officials, even nuns. The Franco troops, backed by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, were no better: they massacred en masse real or alleged leftists, who were often buried in pits on the edge of cemeteries or even just outside cemeteries walls.

The civil war in Spain developed into the first major proxy war in contemporary history. German aircraft from the Condor Legion bombed the small Basque town of Guernica in 1937. In May 1938, the Popular Front government in Madrid was practically finished and offered peace negotiations, but Franco insisted on total submission, so fighting continued. The civil war did not end until March 1939 when the Republicans collapsed. From then on, Francisco Franco was the undisputed ruler of Spain. In total, around half a million Spaniards died directly or indirectly in the civil war.

From then on Franco relied on the fascists, but integrated them into a larger movement that initially retained the name Falange. Although Hitler and Mussolini urged the Spaniards to enter World War II with them in 1940, the dictator essentially limited himself to nominal aid. In 1941 he sent a 17,500-strong volunteer force, mainly made up of particularly convinced Falange supporters, known as the "Blue Division", to the Eastern Front to support the Wehrmacht.

In 1943, the Western Allies put massive pressure on the dictator to reduce his support for Hitler's Germany. Franco officially disbanded the Blue Division, but a few thousand of the volunteers refused to return to Spain and continued fighting on their own. Eventually they were incorporated into the Waffen-SS.

In 1945/46 the USA, Great Britain and France urged Franco to resign, but Franco refused. From the end of 1947, the aggression of the Stalinist-dominated Eastern Bloc meant that the western powers had to accept – or more precisely: had to accept – Spain and its dictator as a partner in the Cold War. Franco admitted that at a later date the monarchy in Spain would be restored. However, he did everything to stabilize his own regime by means of a personality cult around Primo de Rivera, called “the absent one”, and himself.

After a quarter of a century of rule, which was characterized by political bondage as well as economic boom, Francisco Franco officially died on November 20, 1975. His successor as head of state was King Juan Carlos I. He wanted to draw a "line" under the Franco era - a An undertaking that was bound to fail in view of the many victims.

The coming to terms with the tyranny of the Spanish fascists only got underway decades later. To this day, the Spanish conservatives have not been able to free themselves from the shadow of the dictator. So it took years until the unworthy place of homage to Franco in the Basilica de Santa Cruz could be removed. The Franco family staged the reburial to the best of their ability.

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