On November 20, 1975, Carlos Arias Navarro entered the Spanish home without prior announcement on the public television antenna. With his face contorted by a pain as deep as it was pathetic, the then president of the government uttered a sentence that remained in the collective memory of the neighboring country: “Spaniards, Franco is dead”.
The news relieved the vast majority of the population, but humiliated the revolutionary opposition. The placidity of the “biological fact” – a balmy euphemism invented by the regime to refer to the death of the Caudillo – proved the failure of those who fought for the overthrow of the current power. The failure weighed even more in comparison with Portugal, from where images of revolutionary epic emerged.
But the end of the dictatorship was not the beginning of democracy. In fact, at the time, it was not at all evident that Francisco Franco’s death would allow the birth of a liberal and pluralist regime. Democracy required remarkable agreements, bold risks, many advances and a few setbacks.
It required will and commitment from the left and right oppositions, as well as a sense of State (and History) on the part of the technocratic wing of Francoism. It was a stable and orderly democratic transition, although severely threatened by military attempts and terrorist organizations.
It is therefore surprising that Pedro Sánchez’s government chose the dictator’s death as an event to celebrate. Firstly, because the Law for Political Reform in 1976, the first free legislative elections in 1977, the referendum on the Constitution in 1978 or even the defeat of the ultramontane military coup in 1981 are alternatives with greater historical relevance to celebrate freedom and national reconciliation.
However, Sánchez preferred to dedicate 2025 – not just one day, but an entire year of ceremonies, events, round tables and other initiatives – to Franco.
These political debates about the past actually discuss the present. They say more about who we are than what we were. In Portugal it’s the same. There is, however, a huge Iberian difference: while here we look for the date of democracy – April 25th, November 25th, both dates –, in Spain the government clung to the rigor mortis of the dictator.
Perhaps the revolutionary left wants to resurrect Franco to kill him, thus overcoming the humiliation suffered in 1975. The other hypothesis, less Freudian and better supported by facts, is simpler: by recovering Franco, Sánchez and the left that supports him in parliament seek to revive the country that the civil war and dictatorship tore in half. The good, represented by the government, against the bad, concentrated in the opposition.
This moral division offers the necessary justifications to minimize the torrent of corruption, embezzlement and influence peddling that afflicts the government, the PSOE and Sánchez’s family. Furthermore, it authorizes the Executive to trample on norms and laws, and to avoid early elections, since the alternative will be the return of the bad guys to power. In short, half the country is dangerous and illegitimate. And this is how a democracy is destroyed.
By choosing the “biological fact” as the date to celebrate, the Spanish government placed Franco’s corpse inside a Chaimite, with a red carnation in his hand. It’s a terrifying image. A complete historical absurdity, even more pathetic than the face of Arias Navarro on November 20, 1975. The worst thing is that it is an expedient to end the spirit of concord that founds democracy in Spain.
Politologist. Write without applying the new Orthographic Agreement.