Remains of Spanish dictatorship's victims handed to families, 80 years on

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

MAY 19, 2018 / 9:44 AM / UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO
Juan Medina, Miguel Gutierrez
3 MIN READ

GUADALAJARA, Spain (Reuters) - The remains of 22 people killed in the months following Spain’s 1936-39 civil war were handed over to relatives in a ceremony in Guadalajara on Saturday after investigations into a suspected mass grave unearthed the victims.

. . .

The resting place of many killed across the country are still unknown, though the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) has documented 114,226 cases of men and women buried in mass graves around Spain.

In an effort to ease the transition to democracy in 1977 after Franco’s death, Spain passed an amnesty law pardoning political crimes committed during the conflict and the dictatorship in an accord known as the “Pact of Forgetting”.

. . .

Historians estimate about half a million combatants and civilians were killed on the Republican and Nationalist sides in the war, while tens of thousands of Franco’s enemies were later killed or imprisoned in a campaign to wipe out dissent.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-massgraves/remains-of-spanish-dictatorships-victims-handed-to-families-80-years-on-idUSKCN1IK0JZ

---

Overview

General Francisco Franco is important because he became the dictator of Spain just prior to World War II and continued to rule there until his death in 1975. Although the term fascist was used by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and is applied to German dictator Adolf Hitler, it has become synonymous with Franco's government because he continued to rule long after his brother dictators were dead.

. . .

Franco was a firm believer in Catholicism and tried to exterminate non-Catholics in Spain both during and after the Civil War.

Spain's army was so weak that Hitler preferred that Spain remain neutral in World War II, rather that fighting with the Axis powers. This saved General Franco's life and regime. The Vatican's diplomatic corp were able to convince the Allies to continue to treat Spain as a neutral country and an ally in the war against communism and anarchism.

Franco's Spain was notable for its technological and intellectual backwardness as well as its executions of religious and political opponents.

http://www.iiipublishing.com/politics/fascism/franco_main.html



23 October 1940: Nazi leader German Chancellor Adolf Hitler shakes hands with Generalissimo Francisco Franco at Hendaye train station on the French-Spanish border AFP

~ ~ ~

Francisco Franco

. . .

Now commander-in-chief of the armed forces, head of state, and leader of the government, Franco quickly acts to impose order, suppressing all those who present a potential threat to the new regime. "The war is over," he declares, "but the enemy is not dead."

A state of martial law remains in effect until 1948. Hundreds of thousands of Republicans are imprisoned. Between 1939 and 1943 nearly 200,000 are summarily executed or killed.

Criticism is regarded as treason, political parties are outlawed, universal suffrage is eliminated and the Catholic Church is restored as the official religion of Spain. The National Movement is made the country's only legal political organisation and the parliament is turned into a puppet of the executive.

Civil marriage is banned, divorce and abortion are made illegal and the church regains complete control of the education system. Around 30,000 children of political prisoners and those suspected of Republican sympathies are removed from their parents and put up for adoption.

Most of the reformist legislation introduced by the Republicans is revoked. Strikes are banned, the media is muzzled and the moves towards granting autonomy to Catalonia and the Basque provinces are reversed.

. . .

http://www.moreorless.net.au/killers/franco.html

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[bucolic_frolic]

2. The United States supported Francoist Spain in the post-War period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pact_of_Madrid

The Pact of Madrid, signed in 1953 by Spain and the United States of America, ended a period of virtual isolation for Spain. This development came at a time when other victorious allies of World War II and much of the rest of the world remained hostile to what they regarded as a fascist regime sympathetic to the cause of the Third Reich and established with Axis assistance.[citation needed] The 1953 accord took the form of three separate executive agreements that pledged the United States to furnish economic and military aid to Spain. The United States, in turn, was to be permitted to construct and to utilize air and naval bases on Spanish territory (Naval Station Rota, Morón Air Base, Torrejón Air Base and Zaragoza Air Base).

Although not a full-fledged military alliance, the pact did result in a substantial United States contribution to the improvement of Spain's defense capabilities. During the initial United States fiscal years 1954 to 1961 phase, military aid amounted to US$500 million, in the form of grants. Between 1962 and 1982, a further US$1.238 billion of aid in the form of loans (US$727 million) and grants (US$511 million) was provided. During the period 1983 to 1986, United States military aid, entirely in the form of sales under concessional credit terms, averaged US$400 million annually, but it declined to slightly more than US$100 million annually in 1987 and in 1988. The military credits were scheduled to be phased out in the fiscal year 1989, in keeping with Spain's growing self-sufficiency in national defense. More than 200 Spanish officers and NCOs received specialized training in the United States each year under a parallel program.

[Mc Mike]

3. Franco was a special kind of Catholic.

Opus Dei was founded by a Catholic priest, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, on 2 October 1928 in Madrid, Spain.

Post WWII, that was the European base for the Catholic part of the ratline.

I wonder why the victorious allies left Franco in place, after all his nazi buddies got their comeuppance.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Battle fatigue and the Cold War

probably. We relied on existing political structures, organizations, and individuals immediately post-war. Didn't matter who they were, if they would cooperate with information, spies, contacts against our former allies, we were all in. We had little choice because we didn't really understand perfectly well how things operated in Europe. So we cut deals.

[Mc Mike]

6. Our allies in England, France, Norway, Greece, Denmark, etc, Did know perfectly well

how things operated in Europe.

So battle fatigue explained why we didn't depose that nazi asshole, but desire to fight the cold war also explains why we didn't depose him.

Those 2 ideas seem to be 180 degree diametrically opposed, permit me to observe.

[bucolic_frolic]

7. Then why

did we rely so heavily on former Nazi lower-level officers for setting up spy networks and information and contacts in monitoring the Soviet Union's activities in Poland and eastern Europe, for example? They knew how to spy, they had gathered information during the war. I read this in some historical book, I think it was Ambrose's "Rise to Globalism" but I didn't like his observations so I didn't finish the book.

[Mc Mike]

10. Dulles and McCloy, with Sen Prescott Bush leading 'oversight',

were on those nazis' side. So they did what they could to help them, and did what they could to keep others from harming them. And they could do a lot, from their positions within the US power structure.

I remember reading a piece by Vonnegut, in one of his essay/speech book compilations, that pointed out there were at least 3 hot wars going on, every day, since the 'end' of WWII. We were in a hot war in Korea within 5 years. So after WWII, the public was sick of war, but our far righties weren't.

The far right used our intel to destabilize and attack allies in Europe, in France, Greece, anti-fascist Italy, etc. Right away. But Franco was off limits.

The problem is the imprecision of my question, b_f. I have no ill will toward you for offering me an answer, and like your posts in general. (I really appreciated your posting the Maddow clip on Article 2 of Nixon's Impeachment, yesterday.) I guess my question really was 'How could the far right get away with letting fascist Franco keep power, without a lot of backlash from the rank and file anti-nazi military people and citizens who kicked Hitler and Mussolini's sorry asses?'

[Mc Mike]

13. John Loftus covered the uselessness of the war criminals we chose to save,

in terms of intel. There were some rocket scientists we got tech advances from, but Gehlen and Skorzeny were useless, and they were the top of intel assets.

Low level murdering nazi war criminals were even more useless, giving small bits of useless, concocted, 100% unreliable intel to our agencies. They were good at being mass murdering dictator supporting criminals, but that's about it.

[DFW]

5. I lived in Barcelona during the last years of the Franco dictatorship

Things had loosed up considerably, and near the end, Franco himself knew his era would soon pass forever. He told his designated successor Juan Carlos, "you will be able to do things I never could." When I lived there, Catalan was forbidden in schools, daily newspapers and on TV. All the major streets were named after Franco's fascist buddies in the Civil war or after fascist political heroes.

All vestiges of that are now gone. The streets again have their pre-fascist-era names. Street signs are in Catalan, Newspapers are in Catalan. Catalan is the language of the school system. Radio and TV are in Catalan, although stations in Castilian were never shut down or forbidden, and they co-exist peacefully. If you ask a street cop for directions, the first language he will use is Catalan.

And yet, the place has never lost its special character. It remains the capital of Catalunya. It has its identity back. The independence movement has not gained enough traction to succeed basically because the goals the Catalans sought to recover during the dictatorship have long been fulfilled. Separating now would mean a new military, a new currency, a new political infrastructure that Madrid would be in no way responsible for aiding, and an aging physical infastructure that Madrid would rub their hands at no longer being responsible for helping to fix.

The famous Basque author Miguel de Unamuno gave a stinging public rebuttal to a fascist general giving a speech (ending with a perverse "¡Viva la muerte!" ) just before the civil war broke out in 1936. His words were no match for those of Unamuno: "Ustedes vencerán, porque poseen la fuerza bruta. Pero no convencerán." In Castilian, it was a brilliant play on words, using "vencer (conquer)" as a foil to "convencer (persuade)." He said "You will conquer, because you possess brute force, but you will not persuade." Unamuno never lived to see how right he was.

[NNadir]

8. I was privileged to see the painting Guernica at the Reina Sofia 2 years ago.

I'd seen it many times in New York when it was there, but it was special to see it after its return to Spain.

It's an absolutely unbelievable piece; no photograph can do it justice.

I'm not sure if its part of the permanent exhibit there, but there was a show there that focused on Franco as an object of ridicule.

It was small justice, I suppose, but as much justice for which we can hope.

Spain is a troubled, but exceedingly beautiful country.

[hatrack]

9. Dream And Lie of Franco was among the pieces in a recent major Picasso show I saw

Nothing short of blistering - truly brilliant work.

[appalachiablue]

11. K&R

[Odoreida]

12. My father (Abraham Lincoln Brigade vet) always said ...

Franco was the smartest of the first generation Fascist leaders.

Hitler and Mussolini directly helped Franco come to power, but no nonsense about loyalty among dictators.

He sat out WWII, and used anti-Communism to ally with the USA afterward.