St. Fransisco Franco?

[lerapt78]

Thank you for your comment.

We weren’t republicans or communistas, we left for England because we preferred staying in Europe rather than going to South America, which was having problems of its own at the time too. We left because of the post-war repressions taking place - neighbours and family friends went missing just for speaking ill of Franco, and we felt it was time to leave as things were getting difficult in Spain.

God bless you!

I’m glad that your family found the security they were searching for in England. I do have a question though, and I hope you don’t take this as an attack on the memory of your extended friends and neighbors: When you say they went missing just for speaking ill of Franco, could this statement be an oversimplification of a more complicated activism?

I ask, because I am well aware that there was political censorship during Franco’s rule (which lessened as time went on), and I have heard from Spaniards themselves say that people did disappear. However the way I understand it is that these cases were rare, and that the impetus for persecution was if people spoke out publicly against him, or tried to incite or organize underground resistance. Franco did not allow for a public platform to speak against him, true; but if one kept his opinions to himself or in the privacy of his home, he was able to live in peace as were the others.

Thank you very much for your reply, lerapt78. I understand that there was a Civil War going on that involved bloodshed on both sides, which was inevitable. However what could have been done differently is the post-Civil War repressions that Franco implemented. Not only against Communists, but ordinary Joes like you and me. Once he had militarily defeated the Repubicans and was in power,** he could have used political means, rather than repression and violent means, to keep the Communists out**.

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but precisely *which *political means should Franco have employed? Communists have never been known to play nicely and civilly; in fact, the historical record shows they have always used extreme brutality in their endeavors. What kind of political means would have been soft enough, yet strong enough to keep communism out once and for all?

As far as the average Joes go; there were many, many Spaniards who were extremely anti-Franco and yet were able to conduct business, collect wages, earn pensions, and live relatively peacefully under his government. It was *close *to a police state, but not *quite *a police state. I realize that for someone who lives in a country where freedom of speech is highly valued (and I do indeed value it!), Franco’s suppression is viewed as being one of the worst oppressions imaginable. But again, it’s crucial to look at this through a different lens. Facing the horror of communism, and beating it by the skin of his teeth, Franco was not going to take any chances of an immediate counter-uprising by being lax once he assumed power.

So some of the measures that he took, while seeming extremely harsh to someone inexperienced with the Red revolution, were necessary in light of the political instability and tenuous victory that he had achieved. He was powerful, and he allowed no quarter for another insurrection. Harsh? Yes. But that is how he saved Spain. Otherwise, it would have fallen just as the entire eastern bloc of Europe had fallen, with the help of the Anglosphere.

IMO, that is why Franco is vilified by the west: because he managed to do the one thing that no other European was able to do in the first half of the 19th century: He managed to defeat communism in Spain completely. Any softer measures, I fear, would have resulted in yet a new form of attack.

Here’s an article (archived from the Guardian), which mentions the post-war repression, which continued up until 1952.

rogerhollander.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/franco-repression-ruled-as-a-crime-against-humanity/

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Garcia Lorca – I read quite a bit of his work in college and he was a mighty fine poet indeed. He was a very outspoken leftist though, as were many of his contemporaries in the Spanish surrealist movement. It is not certain who killed him, though it’s been suggested that he was shot by the Nationalists in response to the recent killing of a prominent monarchist. Not to diminish the tragedy of death, but quite bluntly, that is what war is all about – enemies killing enemies. Salvador Dali (a friend of his who was also a critic of the Church and the Right), for example, did not come under persecution, presumably because he maintained a publically neutral political stance.

Still haven’t had the chance to research the baby-snatching further. I don’t trust English sources with regard to Franco.

 

[CesarAugustus]

Communists were killing Catholic clergy and religious, also, destroying Churches and doing other horrible acts.

“During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, and especially in the early months of the conflict, individual clergymen were executed while entire religious communities were persecuted, leading to a death toll of 13 bishops, 4,172 diocesan priests and seminarists, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns, for a total of 6,832 clerical victims, as part of what is referred to as Spain’s Red Terror”*

*jstor.org/discover/10.2307/261121?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102125632563

The left in Spain and in other countries, often try to ignore or downplay that.

 

[lerapt78]

Communists were killing Catholic clergy and religious, also, destroying Churches and doing other horrible acts.

Not only killing, but doing so in blasphemous ways. Hanging priests on crucifixes, stripping nuns and throwing them into the streets, exhuming the bodies of dead nuns and putting them on display.

The left in Spain and in other countries, often try to ignore or downplay that.

Even the “right” often tends to ignore and/or downplay it as well because, you know, fascism is “bad”.

It introduces a matter of perspective to consider the quote from the prominent Hungarian Communist Tibor Szamuely, compatriot of Bela Kun, to see what Franco was up against and why he had to use the harsh methods (during and immediately after the war) that he did:

(bolding mine):

“Everywhere counter-revolutionaries run about and swagger; beat them down! Beat their heads where you find them!** If counter-revolutionaries were to gain the upper hand for even a single hour, there will be no mercy for any proletarian**. Before they stifle the revolution, suffocate them in their own blood!” ^ Vörös Újság, 11 February 1919

The proletatians didn’t fare too well under the communist regimes, despite its leaders promising them a better life. Those proletarians they sought to support them in their anarchism were in turn “beaten down” - not by their enemies - but by their own. Franco did indeed stifle the revolution, and the communist mentality explains why he couldn’t play nice with them afterward until it had been completely uprooted once and for all.

 

[lerapt78]

In regards to the “Stolen Babies” accusations that were all over the media recently, I looked up a few Spanish publications (I didn’t bother to try to get a translated version - sorry):

sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/05/24/actualidad/1369398149_303996.html

This article describes the cases of several women who are just now accusing doctors who were practicing gynecologists during the war of child robbing. Evidently, some of those accused are now dead, so it is their words against dead men. The article recounts the allegations, but no conclusive evidence is mentioned.

According to one of the doctors accused, babies were never “stolen” from anyone – rather, many children born illegitimately during the ‘60s were given up for adoption due to the stigma of the unwed mother. That’s not much different than what happened here in the U.S. during the ’40s and ‘50s with unwed mothers. And Spain was far more traditional than the U.S., so the stigma would have carried on longer. Some of these adoptions however are now being claimed to have been “child-robbing”. I don’t know – there could be truth to these claims. But just now these accusations are popping up (coincidentally?) amid growing nationalism in Spain? When many of the accused are dead can’t defend themselves? I wonder if there’s a request for financial restitution involved?

sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/06/12/actualidad/1371041565_224449.html

Again, accusers claiming there are “massive archives” of these illegal child transfers, and yet no proof has been presented as of yet by the accusers. How would they know there are massive archives if the previous governments supposedly hadn’t cooperated with investigations, which is their complaint? If they “know” there are archives, surely that would be because they had some sort of proof of it?

larazon.es/detalle_hemeroteca/noticias/LA_RAZON_369774/historico/4551-ninos-robados#.Ub912r7D-gw

This newspaper columnist raises questions about the supposed theft. What mother would consent to having her child robbed? If the response is that these women were shown the bodies of dead babies and told they were theirs while the real babies were secretly transferred to an adoptive couple, then where did all of these dead baby bodies come from? How is it that the women didn’t hear about all of these stillborn births and begin to ask questions? Why are these questions just now coming up, decades later? Franco’s been dead for over 35 years – surely a probe could have been done before, while the accused were still alive and their businesses were still open for subpoenas of records.

The columnist suspects that these were simply unwed mothers who entrusted the Church orphanages with their children, who were later placed up for adoption, as abortion was not allowed.

The columnist goes on to hypothesize that this is just another leftist attack on the Church and the Right by the accusers (claiming psychological trauma while accusing evil nuns of telling their mothers their babies were dead)

The “unwed mother” theory does seem to be a plausible explanation. The estimated percentage of children born to unwed mothers during in the 1950s and 1960s is about 6%. If the population in 1955 was a little under 30 million people, then the number of illegitimate births would have been about 1.8 million. Certainly, if private adoption were a solution for an unmarried woman, that number is more than enough to include the 300,000 hypothetical “stolen babies”. I guess we won’t know either way until solid evidence comes out.

 

[Thompson5]

I’m glad that your family found the security they were searching for in England. I do have a question though, and I hope you don’t take this as an attack on the memory of your extended friends and neighbors: When you say they went missing just for speaking ill of Franco, could this statement be an oversimplification of a more complicated activism?

I ask, because I am well aware that there was political censorship during Franco’s rule (which lessened as time went on), and I have heard from Spaniards themselves say that people did disappear. However the way I understand it is that these cases were rare, and that the impetus for persecution was if people spoke out publicly against him, or tried to incite or organize underground resistance. Franco did not allow for a public platform to speak against him, true; but if one kept his opinions to himself or in the privacy of his home, he was able to live in peace as were the others.

Hi, thank you for your question (don’t worry, I don’t take your question as an attack). Those who I knew went missing were not anti-Franco activists, Republicans or Communists. They had literally spoken badly of him in public, in the same way as one may say today “I hate Obama for having done this”, or “I disagree that David Cameron did that, it was foolish etc” while talking to someone. And they got caught, or someone told the authorities of what they had said. In some cases, they got arrested there and then, but most times the police would just knock on their doors at night and that was it, they were never seen or heard from again. And this was after the Civil War - I agree with you that he had to defeat the Communists violently, but he didn’t have to treat his own people in such a cruel way.

 

[Thompson5]

In regards to the “Stolen Babies” accusations that were all over the media recently, I looked up a few Spanish publications (I didn’t bother to try to get a translated version - sorry):

sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/05/24/actualidad/1369398149_303996.html

This article describes the cases of several women who are just now accusing doctors who were practicing gynecologists during the war of child robbing. Evidently, some of those accused are now dead, so it is their words against dead men. The article recounts the allegations, but no conclusive evidence is mentioned.

According to one of the doctors accused, babies were never “stolen” from anyone – rather, many children born illegitimately during the ‘60s were given up for adoption due to the stigma of the unwed mother. That’s not much different than what happened here in the U.S. during the ’40s and ‘50s with unwed mothers. And Spain was far more traditional than the U.S., so the stigma would have carried on longer. Some of these adoptions however are now being claimed to have been “child-robbing”. I don’t know – there could be truth to these claims. But just now these accusations are popping up (coincidentally?) amid growing nationalism in Spain? When many of the accused are dead can’t defend themselves? I wonder if there’s a request for financial restitution involved?

sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/06/12/actualidad/1371041565_224449.html

Again, accusers claiming there are “massive archives” of these illegal child transfers, and yet no proof has been presented as of yet by the accusers. How would they know there are massive archives if the previous governments supposedly hadn’t cooperated with investigations, which is their complaint? If they “know” there are archives, surely that would be because they had some sort of proof of it?

larazon.es/detalle_hemeroteca/noticias/LA_RAZON_369774/historico/4551-ninos-robados#.Ub912r7D-gw

This newspaper columnist raises questions about the supposed theft. What mother would consent to having her child robbed? If the response is that these women were shown the bodies of dead babies and told they were theirs while the real babies were secretly transferred to an adoptive couple, then where did all of these dead baby bodies come from? How is it that the women didn’t hear about all of these stillborn births and begin to ask questions? Why are these questions just now coming up, decades later? Franco’s been dead for over 35 years – surely a probe could have been done before, while the accused were still alive and their businesses were still open for subpoenas of records.

The columnist suspects that these were simply unwed mothers who entrusted the Church orphanages with their children, who were later placed up for adoption, as abortion was not allowed.

The columnist goes on to hypothesize that this is just another leftist attack on the Church and the Right by the accusers (claiming psychological trauma while accusing evil nuns of telling their mothers their babies were dead)

The “unwed mother” theory does seem to be a plausible explanation. The estimated percentage of children born to unwed mothers during in the 1950s and 1960s is about 6%. If the population in 1955 was a little under 30 million people, then the number of illegitimate births would have been about 1.8 million. Certainly, if private adoption were a solution for an unmarried woman, that number is more than enough to include the 300,000 hypothetical “stolen babies”. I guess we won’t know either way until solid evidence comes out.

In many cases, the mothers were told that their babies had died and they weren’t allowed to see the body - it was supposedly “buried” and that was it, and the truth was uncovered later on when graves were opened and found to be empty. I feel that the article oversimplifies the issue a bit (I’ll try and find another one, La Razon has traditionally been very pro-right wing and very pro-Church, so it may not be the most reliable source for this case, the “El Pais” one is more reliable though). I believe that a nun was arrested not too long ago in connection with this. But, like you say, no point in really arguing this until more evidence comes to light, still very early to debate this

 

[lerapt78]

Yeah, I certainly understand bias, so I tried to include a more neutral newspaper.

Here’s another one, from El Mundo, which is claimed to be more left-leaning:

elmundo.es/especiales/2010/09/espana/ninos_robados/vidas_ficcion.html

«Mis padres me confesaron que me habían comprado»; «Pagaron por mí más que por un piso»; «Un religioso les dio a elegir entre niño o niña», «Tuvieron que aportar a cambio una madre gestante»… Estos testimonios no pertenecen al guión de una ficción. Son historias reales de personas que, de adultos, han descubierto que su vida es una mentira. Recién nacidos, en el hospital, cambiaron de manos previo pago de sus padres adoptivos. ¿Quién fue su madre real? ¿Quién se enriqueció con su venta? Miles de preguntas se agolpan sin respuesta en sus cabezas.

“My parents confessed that they bought me; a cleric gave them a choice between boy or girl; they had to financially support pregnant mothers; who profited from these sales?; these are real stories from adults who have discovered their lives are a lie”

The statement “they had to financially support pregnant mothers” is an obvious assertion that the biological mothers were complicit in the adoption process. The question “who profited from these sales?” is easily answered: the adoption facilitators and (possibly) the biological mothers/fathers. Adoption is a lucrative business, even more so today - nothing shady about that.

Según el abogado Enrique Vila, entre 200.000 y 300.000 personas podrían vivir bajo esta sombra. Casos que hunden sus raíces en los últimos coletazos del franquismo y ven la luz ahora, cuando sus protagonistas están descubriendo que su familia no es la que creían. Sus relatos descubren tramas de película: intercambios de niños por dinero a plena luz del día, bebés que salían del paritorio tras haber sido dados por muertos, matronas que falsificaban actas de alumbramiento…[Así funcionaban las tramas]

More about “hidden” adoption records and exchange of money. Which again, doesn’t mean anything nefarious occurred - it simply means that private adoptions were facilitated and perhaps because of the shame of unwed pregnancy, these transactions occurred in secrecy. I don’t think it was ever rare for adoptive parents not to divulge the circumstances to their children, due to the possible psychological effects. That’s always been the question - do I tell the child or not? I think that only recently is there a lot of transparency regarding adoption because, 1.) legality mandates it 2) with computers, it’s easy to find out the truth anyway, so it’s probably not worth it to lie, and 3) there’s a lot of interest in doing genetic testing for reasons related to health history and screening.

The article does mention previously-declared dead children coming out of nurseries, but again, this is all hearsay, and what proof is there? Evidence such as, “My name is such and such, and my “dead” child was supposed to have been buried here, at this cemetery. Look, here is a headstone, and an empty coffin!” That, to me, is evidence of something shady; the rest is hearsay and /or rumor. Of course, it is possible that a few of these cases did actually occur. . . . but that would hardly prove a nation-wide, organized conspiracy.

Another interesting point of consideration is the political leanings of the adoptive parents. If the claim is that the Francquista government wanted to take away children from leftist supporters, then logic would follow that it would only give the babies to those who were aligned with Franco. That is, they wouldn’t take a baby away from a leftist, just to give it to *another *leftist. Were all of these adoptive parents hard-right supporters? The articles don’t mention this.

 

[Atheling]

Resurrecting this thread as the Catholic Church just beatified 522 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

As for Francisco Franco, allow me to give the view of somebody actually familiar with the realities of the Spanish Civil War. First, Franco was not a fascist - fascism is, by nature, a revolutionary ideology which necessitates a top-down, corporatist restructuring of society, where all loyalty is directed to the state, to the exclusion of religious faith. As Mussolini put it, “all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Franco was a radical traditionalist, melding the Falange movement’s Catholic social values, emphasis on authority, hierarchy, and anti-communism/anti-liberalism with the Carlists’ strain of Spanish imperialism. At the time of the revolt, Spain was being bled to death by a Marxist government bent on reshaping society in accordance with Moscow’s vision for a “workers world” - secularism (de facto state atheism, in practice), egalitarianism, socialism, etc. That posters in this thread decry Franco’s receipt of assistance from Germany and Italy, while trivialising the Republicans’ mass murder of Christians and close relations with the Soviet Union and international communism, is actually shocking. The bottom line is that Franco saved Spain (even if only temporarily, as the recent socialist governments have been picking up where the Republicans failed), and was a truly great Catholic and national leader.