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On the surface, not many suspected that Francisco Franco could become a authoritarian ruler capable of enforcing a ruthless regime across four decades. He appeared as a short, squeaky-voiced army officer with a shaky grasp of non-military matters and zero charisma. But he accomplished precisely that, before succumbing to natural causes in a hospital in Madrid, 50 years ago this week.

The Warning of Superficial Ordinariness

Nowadays, Franco acts as a warning that outward mediocrity is not an obstacle to the ruthlessly ambitious. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a slippery, clever strategist. His drive was underpinned by an unyielding determination, a glib indifference to violence and unbounded self-esteem.

Those who praise and defend him – including some on the resurgent far right in the Spanish nation, the United States and the UK – still claim Franco was not truly a autocrat, but rather a cherished saviour from communism. They are wrong, but dictators do not emerge from nowhere.

"Some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny," political thinker from France Jean-François Revel noted the year after Franco's death: "to wield it personally or – far more puzzlingly – to submit to it." He thought the same: the true desire of people was to see and feel themselves governed.

The Reality of Brutality and Suppression

Naturally, if Franco had been genuinely popular, there would have been no need for his 1936 military insurrection against an elected leftwing government, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the ensuing Spanish civil war. He would not have executed 20,000 individuals later.

He seized control in a Spain mired in post-imperial ennui – a powerful realm having vanished the century before. He aimed to restore Spain's greatness. He accused outsiders. They were either plundering the nation's wealth, plotting against the country as part of a Marxist-Jewish-masonic plot, or corrupting local thoughts with external ideologies: democratic systems, socialism, Marxist doctrine, and his strange obsession, secret societies.

A Calculated, Brutal Conflict

His war was intentionally prolonged and brutal in occupied areas, alongside a bloody purging of opponents in an attempt to "purify" this tainted Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of supposedly "masculine" men and subservient women, whose bodily autonomy, children, employment and property were reduced, postponed, or transferred to male relatives.

Following a punitive win, Franco confined the nation into a straitjacket of autarky and discarded the key. Economic self-sufficiency was embraced. International investment and products were shunned. "We have everything we need," he said.

Starvation and Isolation

However, this was incorrect. The direct outcome was starvation, with people perishing in urban areas in 1940 and 1945. While traveling on a triumphal journey through the towns of southern regions, people pleaded at his car window. "Please, Mr. Franco, some bread," they said. Even German representatives in Spain, his allies, protested that a impressive exterior hid the ghastly truth. By backing Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco turned Spain into a outcast nation, but he refused to step aside later. Spaniards sank further into misery.

Overconfidence and Political Revival

Franco's conviction that he was both selected by God and always right meant he insisted on a permanent rule in charge. A British ambassador complained that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", unaware of his own ineptitude. Luck, and a absence of clear doctrine, saved him. As the Cold War began, he polished his opposition to communism and the United States restored his reputation.

Consequently, a disastrous economy was ultimately saved and forced to open up by the US and the International Monetary Fund. During the sixties, Spain was drawn into a southern European economic boom that had started long before in neighboring countries. Abruptly, tourists were flocking to Spanish beaches at coastal resorts or on the Costa del Sol. Numerous citizens remained unemployed, but the money they sent home after moving abroad also helped.

State Terror and Historical Amnesia

He gradually abandoned his most foolish concepts – from founding a new empire to making synthetic gasoline with a "magic" formula – but did not relinquish his primary goal of making Spaniards tame, compliant and politically apathetic. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 coup onwards, implemented a strict, Goebbels-inspired press law, and made sure multiple cohorts were educated in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing Francoist curriculum. Even into the seventies, autonomous political groups, democratic voting and labor organizations remained banned.

He also treated as children Spaniards, deeming them incapable of self-rule. The most frightening aspect of his heritage was that so many accepted this.

Reversion to Brutality and Ancient Methods

Once that fear-based agreement started collapsing during the last decade of his regime, he reverted to forceful control. Aggressive law enforcement, abuse, execution teams and even that medieval form of execution, the garrote, reappeared. This method saw a iron band fastened around a convict's throat and constricted until it snapped their spine or cut off their air supply; it was employed by a western European government on its population, during the seventies.

Anxiety and Democratic Change

However, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco chronicler, remembers feeling sad as a boy, upon hearing the news that Franco had died: "The grief of that youngster was shared at the time by countless citizens, who believed that the man who had just died had been the best possible solution for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "This was the narrative at educational institutions, in the press, on the television … "

The main feeling in response to Franco's demise was anxiety. Ultimately, what happens after the man at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship passes away? Power was initially passed to the monarch Juan Carlos, who oversaw three years of reforms that ended with a public vote on the democratic constitution that remains in effect. Spain remains a dynamic, disputatious democracy.

Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage

Heroic narratives emerged to explain this. For the left, it was the outcome of pressure from brave street protesters, youth and laborers who fought continually with riot police. For the right, it was a sign of establishment wisdom. For his supporters, in the most twisted version of all, it forms part of the dictator’s legacy.

And therein lies a problem. At the Madrid copy shop where I produced drafts of my recent book on the ruler, El Generalisimo, the proprietor kept insisting that his father stated he had lived well under Franco. His parent recalled, naturally, only the prosperity of the sixties.

The Peril of Unawareness

During the promotion of the Spanish edition of the publication, I have also discovered that the issues outlined by María Ramírez about growing up amid quiet about the dictatorship are still present. University students tell me that their high school teachers were still avoiding the subject just a year or two ago. As a father of young Spaniards, that is a huge worry.

Lack of knowledge is risky. It is understandable that almost one in five young people believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The sole method to change that is to end the quiet and teach young Spaniards what the Franco era was really about.