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Initially, not many expected that Francisco Franco would become a strongman capable of enforcing a ruthless dictatorship for 40 years. He appeared as a short, high-pitched military man with a poor understanding of civilian affairs and little personal appeal. However he did exactly that, prior to passing away naturally in a Madrid hospital, 50 years ago this week.

The Warning of Outward Mediocrity

To this day, Franco acts as a warning that outward mediocrity is not an obstacle to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a slippery, shrewd operator. His drive was supported by an iron will, a glib indifference to violence and limitless self-esteem.

Those who praise and defend him – including some on the resurgent extreme right in the Spanish nation, the United States and the UK – continue to assert Franco was not truly a dictator, but instead a beloved 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," French political theorist Jean-François Revel noted the year after Franco's death: "to wield it personally or – much more mysteriously – to submit to it." He thought the same: what people really wanted was to see and feel themselves governed.

The Truth of Brutality and Suppression

Naturally, if Franco had been genuinely popular, there would have been no necessity for his 1936 coup against an elected leftwing government, or for the half a million dead of the ensuing Spanish civil war. He would not have executed 20,000 people afterwards.

Franco grabbed power in a Spain still slumped in post-imperial ennui – a powerful realm having vanished the previous century. Franco wanted to restore Spain's greatness. He accused outsiders. They were stealing Spain’s money, plotting against the country as part of a conspiracy theory, or corrupting local thoughts with foreign ideas: democratic systems, leftist ideas, Marxist doctrine, and his strange obsession, Freemasonry.

A Calculated, Brutal Conflict

His war was intentionally prolonged and violent behind the lines, alongside a ruthless elimination of dissenters in an attempt to "purify" this tainted Spain. The reimagined nation also had to be a place of supposedly "masculine" men and obedient women, whose bodily autonomy, children, employment and property were reduced, shelved, or handed over to male relatives.

After a vengeful victory, Franco locked Spain into a corset of self-reliance and discarded the key. Autarky was adopted. Foreign capital and goods were shunned. "We have everything we need," he said.

Famine and Pariah Status

But he was wrong. The direct outcome was starvation, with people dying on city streets in 1940 and 1945. As he drove on a victory tour through the towns of Jaén and Málaga, people pleaded at his car window. "Please, Mr. Franco, some bread," they said. Even Nazi officials in Spain, his supporters, complained that a impressive exterior hid the horrific reality. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco made Spain a outcast nation, but he declined to relinquish power later. The Spanish people sank further into suffering.

Overconfidence and Political Revival

Franco's conviction that he was both divinely chosen and infallible meant he demanded a permanent rule in charge. A UK diplomat complained that he lived in a "thick fog of self-satisfaction", blind to his own incompetence. Luck, and a absence of clear doctrine, came to Franco’s rescue. As the Cold War began, he polished his opposition to communism and the United States restored his reputation.

Consequently, a failing economic system was ultimately saved and compelled to liberalize by the United States and the IMF. In the 1960s, Spain was swept into a regional economic growth that had begun earlier in neighboring countries. Abruptly, tourists were flocking to Spanish beaches at coastal resorts or on the Costa del Sol. Many Spaniards remained unemployed, but the money they sent home after emigrating to northern Europe also helped.

Authoritarian Control and Forgotten History

Franco quietly dropped his most foolish concepts – from establishing a new realm to producing artificial fuel with a "miraculous" formula – but did not relinquish his central aim of making Spaniards docile, compliant and politically apathetic. He invested massively in state terror from the 1936 takeover forward, deployed a rigid, propaganda-based press law, and made sure generations of Spaniards were educated in a deeply traditional and historically amnesiac Francoist curriculum. As late as the 1970s, independent political parties, free and fair elections and trade unions remained prohibited.

He also treated as children Spaniards, deeming them incapable of governing themselves. The most frightening aspect of his heritage was that a large number believed him.

Reversion to Brutality and Ancient Methods

Once that fear-based agreement finally began to fall apart during the last decade of his rule, he reverted to violent domination. Trigger-happy police, abuse, firing squads and even that ancient killing method, the strangulation device, returned. The latter saw a metal collar placed around a condemned person’s neck and constricted until it snapped their spine or stopped their breathing; it was employed by a western European government on its population, in 1974.

Fear and the Transition to Democracy

However, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco biographer, recalls experiencing sorrow as a boy, upon hearing the news that Franco had died: "The grief of that youngster was felt at the time by countless citizens, who believed that the man who had just died had been the optimal answer for a country that was hard to rule," he wrote. "That is what they said at educational institutions, in the press, on the television … "

The main feeling in response to Franco's demise was fear. Ultimately, what happens after the figure at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship dies? Authority was transferred to the young king Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that culminated in a referendum on the founding document that still holds today. Spain remains a dynamic, contentious democratic state.

Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage

Inspiring accounts arose to account for this. From the leftist perspective, it was the result of pressure from brave street protesters, students and laborers who clashed repeatedly with riot police. From the conservative view, it was a indication of institutional prudence. For his supporters, in the most distorted interpretation of all, it forms part of the dictator’s legacy.

And here rests a problem. At the Madrid copy shop where I produced drafts of my recent book on the dictator, El Generalisimo, the owner kept maintaining that his father stated he had prospered under Franco. His father remembered, naturally, only the economic boom of the 1960s.

The Peril of Unawareness

While promoting the local version of the book, I have also realised that the problems described by María Ramírez about childhood amid quiet about the regime are still present. College attendees inform 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 dangerous. It is understandable that almost one in five young people think his regime was beneficial for Spain. The sole method to change that is to end the quiet and teach the new generation what Francoism was really about.