In my life time

So apparently yesterday was the 50^th Anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death.   In Portugal next door, the return to democracy occurred after the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974 (which was just before I was born). In Portugal, the dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar died in 1968, but his regime “Estado Novo” collapsed in 1974.

Over the last year or so, I’ve become slightly obsessed with both Franco and Salazar, because I knew very little about both men and I thought dictatorships ended in Europe after the Second World War, boy was I wrong.   Anyway, I also thought that they, Salazar and Franco, were both kinda the same.  Again, boy was I wrong. 

And the fact that both of these events happened relatively recently, or at least relatively recently in my mind, means either 1) I am older than I think or 2) 50 years isn’t that long ago.   A quick aside, one of my teachers in High School, mentioned this idea in academia that history less than 50 years shouldn’t be taught because the impacts of those events are still occurring, and may not be complete.  

So back to the Iberian Peninsula.   Apparently Franco and Salazar were two different men, obviously and they both had different motivations.  They were equally brutal in their repression however.  

Franco comes to power after collapse of the previous of the previous Monarchy.  Long story short, Franco seizes an opportunity entering the Spanish Civil War and conquers all of Spain.  The Spanish Civil War ends in 1938 and served until his death in 1975, so roughly 38 years.  He was very much a fascist and “supported” the Nazis and Mussolini, but stayed officially neutral during the war.  He killed tens of thousands of citizens and repressed opposition, etc…  I saw one interview, where an expert said that 1) Hitler’s idea of a thousand year Reich wasn’t ambitious enough for Franco, and 2) he would rather kill half of the Spanish population die instead of having the opposition win.  And just wow on both accounts. 

Salazar came to power in the 1920s after a military coup as Finance Minister and managed to stabilize the nation’s finances (on the backs of the poorest).  As a result of his economic policies,  he was put in charge of the government.  In my mind. Salazar defied labels. He was a staunch Catholic, (Is that a thing?) but kept Church and State separate.   He was anti communist and anti capitalist.   During the Second World, he worked to get Jews out of France and Germany and allowed them to flee to the United States and Canada. And he had this idea that Portugal was a multi-continental Country, meaning that all of its colonies in Africa, India and Asia, weren’t actually colonies, but were part of Portugal itself.   Because of that belief Salazar was brutal in his wars against de-colonization, and Portugal gave up its African colonies a decade after the French and British.  

The thing I am most interested in is that neither country, Spain or Portugal have had a reckoning, truth and reconciliation commission, etc…    after the two dictatorships.   My sense is that in both countries, you generally do not talk about “those years.”

I am sure there is so much more about these stories that I am not exposed to because I am not Spanish or Portuguese.