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Public discourse and clichés perpetuated over time are one thing and reality is quite another. Official lies proliferate at all times and places and it would seem that the Franco regime stood out in this field.
The family. In public, Franco defended the family institution, but in the private sphere it could be said that Franco came from a broken family. Paul Preston has spoken about the mutual contempt between the dictator and his father (and the scandals carried out by the latter). But the family melodrama does not end there: relations with his brother Ramón were so bad that the aviator wrote a short novel in which he murdered the generalissimo.
Poverty. After the Civil War, poverty and hunger took over the country. The destruction caused by the war first, then the international isolation and, finally, the drought caused the misery. Or so the regime said. The latest research discards these arguments and indicates that they were actually propaganda to cover up the real problem: autarky, poor distribution of resources and incorrigible incompetence.
The male chauvinism. More from the times of Franco’s regime, a time in which women did not exactly live on an equal footing and in which Elena Francis’ office became a guide – quite sexist, by the way – for many of them between 1947 and 1984. Well, although the presenter was always female, from 1966 onwards the scriptwriter who advised the listeners was a man.
Expansionism. Although, except in specific moments, the regime presented itself as a supporter of peace, underhand it offered to participate in wars such as Korea and Vietnam, although with little success. The same one with which Arias Navarro applied to the United States to invade Portugal after the 1974 revolution. Regarding this country, the same Franco who sealed the Iberian Pact with Salazar in 1942 had written his thesis under the title How to invade and conquer Portugal in 72 hours.
Roman wine. Wine was very important in Roman culture, but experts have always maintained that the characteristics and quality of this drink were very different from current products. However, a group of researchers have compared the ancient techniques with those still used in Georgia today and have come to the conclusion that perhaps they were not so different and there could even have been some of great quality. Read in The Conversation. (in English)
History of a discovery. The mastabas were funerary monuments where members of the royal family and high officials of ancient Egypt were buried. This series of five video clips produced by the Louvre Museum chronicles the discovery and restoration process of the mastaba chapel of Akhethétep. An exciting journey through time. (subtitled in Spanish)
Millionaire aid. The debate surrounding the United States aid package for Ukraine, which is valued at $61 billion and which received the green light from Congress last Saturday, reflects old trends and impulses in American politics. That there has been – and still is – a frontal opposition from a very important part of the Republican congressmen evokes the classic isolationist ideas of US politics, but especially of the interwar era.
The United States passed several neutrality laws (1935, 1936, 1937 and 1939) that aimed to prevent the country from becoming involved in conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War or the Sino-Japanese War. These initiatives were supported by groups close to the Republican Party, as today, but also by some prominent Democratic representatives. In the majority state of opinion of the American population, the feeling predominated that years ago participation in the Great War had been due to the interests of industrialists in the arms sector and not to a political, diplomatic or ideological necessity.
Roosevelt gradually managed to change that position in the early stages of World War II, when in 1940 a cornered United Kingdom began receiving American aid thanks to the Destroyers for Bases agreement. Later, the Lend-Lease Act expanded North American aid to its future allies. In total, thanks to that law, during the Second World War the United States allocated some 660,000 million dollars – at the current exchange rate – to support the fight of other countries against the Axis, ten times more than the amount approved last week for Ukraine.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and Germany declared war on the United States, the restrictions of the 1930s became history.
