In Germany, an Adolf Hitler Foundation would be illegal, dedicated to “disseminate and promote the study and knowledge about the life, thought, legacy and work of the Führer, in its human, military and political dimension, as well as about the achievements of the years of his tenure as head of state and highest military authority. In Spain there is not only such a foundation, but it has even received generous state subsidies.
Replace Hitler and Führer with Franco and Generalissimo or Caudillo. And he is already. The current president of the Francisco Franco Foundation is retired General Juan Chicharro Ortega, 72, and for eight years a field assistant to Juan Carlos I. Another of the foundation’s goals is to fight “against the so-called Historical Memory Law.” . In their own way, those nostalgic for the dictatorship claim a history. Not history, a story.
We will leave to authorized voices the suitability or otherwise of a “cultural institution” that defends anti-democratic values ??and that received 150,000 euros from the PP between 2000 and 2003 to digitize its funds. But even the staunchest critics of what this entity represents will accept that History must be remembered in capital letters. Do you doubt it? If you have young people nearby, ask them what they know about the dictatorship. They will surprise you.
We dedicate the history of Franco’s tables to those young people (and to the not so young who shamelessly maintain that today we have less freedom than then). Tables for banquets, to direct military operations and to sign executions by firing squads and vile garrottes. It is said that we act in bed as at the table and that a stoic diner will never be an epicurean lover. Franco acted in life as at the table. Coldly.
The photo library of the National Library of Spain, a truly cultural institution, contains an extraordinary collection of photographs about the dictator that illustrate his relationship with tablecloths (those that have been seen so far in this report are a very small sample). There is a certain consensus among historians about the existence of three Francos. This is the opinion, for example, of the British Hispanist Paul Preston.
Preston is the author of a canonical biography: Franco, Caudillo de España (Grijalbo). Professor Preston argues that there was “a brave soldier of extraordinary ability” between 1912 and 1926; “a calculating and ambitious professional soldier between 1936 and 1939”; and finally there was another Franco, the third, “a brutal and effective dictator who resisted 36 more years in power”, an autocrat “with a surprising intellectual mediocrity”.
If you think that Preston is harsh, you should read Franco: a psychological biography (Today’s Issues), in which the psychiatrist Enrique González Duro explains that the dictator’s behavior at the front, as well as his excessive obsession with hunting and fishing , is a “symptom of sexual frustration”, a displacement of erotic activity and the realization of “a mastery fantasy”. How exaggerated! Fantasy of domain! Many will think.
Spain is one of the countries with the most deaths in the ditches. We do not have an exact number of the victims of Francoism. To the deaths of the war, victims of one side and another, we must add the executions of the subsequent repression. Numerous scholars have also called attention to “the large number of suicides in prison” and the reaction of power. Talking about domination here does not seem so exaggerated then…
Preston himself maintains that there were cases in which the dictatorship felt cheated by these evasions and took revenge “often executing relatives of prisoners who committed suicide.” Franco’s character (the apex of this pyramid of hate) was forged in the barracks and at home, with his mother, with whom he ate whenever he could, even at the beginning of his brilliant career and was assigned to the Regiment of Zamora number 8.
The regiment was quartered in his hometown, El Ferrol (for years El Ferrol del Caudillo). It is not difficult to imagine those after-meals, in which María del Pilar Bahamonde and Pardo de Andrade would put the absent husband, gambler, womanizer, drinker and with extramarital affairs like rags before the most devout of their sons (the result of which Eugenio Franco was born puey). Franco was the reverse of her father.
Then came the African adventure, the July 18 uprising and support for Hitler and the Axis during World War II, a train from which Paca la Culona knew how to get off just in time (as his friend and accomplice General Queipo de Llano, of unfortunate memory for resorting to rape as a weapon of war). And always, until his death on November 20, 1975, the cold gaze of that diner named Franco.
This Friday marks 17,291 days of his death: 47 years, four months and four days. It seems that they are 47 centuries judging by the self-confidence with which some say that now there is less freedom than then. Franco was above all a cruel and ruthless being, even with his own. He once had a legionnaire shot who refused to eat and threw his plate at an officer. The entire battalion had to parade before the corpse.
Many exegetes of the dictator insist on the development of Spain during “the 20 years of peace”, although it is impossible to know how far that leap forward would have gone with a free country. Others ignore that Franco amassed a considerable fortune and recall his alleged Spartan tastes. Apparently, in the palace of El Pardo and in the pazo de Meirás he ate fatally. But that just means he wasn’t a lover of fine dining.
In addition to the indifference that the dictator exuded (“Do as I do: don’t get involved in politics”, he said), many visitors and courtiers were surprised by the bland meals that were served in their residences, and that reminded them of the menu of a hospital. He was not a sybaritic swordsman, despite his plump figure and double chin with which he was immortalized on the coins minted with the legend: “Caudillo de España por la gracia de Dios”.
Some citizens who lived under his boot have softened the memory. And others who were born later don’t even want to remember it. But History in capital letters is stubborn and a dictatorship cannot be whitewashed, despite many things that should be improved today. It is an insult to intelligence and thousands of dead to say that there is less freedom than in the past. Expressions such as “all politicians are equal” are not valid.
It is not true: not all are equal. Neither should that other expression so in vogue: “I’m not interested in politics” (Franco couldn’t have said it better). Politics should be like food. Not everyone likes to cook, but everyone likes (or should like) to eat well. Only 47 years, four months and four days have passed since the dictator’s death. There are still few to digest so much opprobrium.
