Francisco Franco

Who was Francisco Franco?

Francisco Franco Bahamonde was the dictator of Spain from 1939 to his death in 1975. Coming from a military background, he became the youngest general in Europe in the 1920s.

A conservative, he was shocked when the monarchy was removed and replaced with a democratic republic in 1931. With the 1936 elections, the conservatives fell and the leftist Popular Front came to power. Looking to overthrow the republic, Franco and other generals staged a partially successful coup, which started the Spanish Civil War. With the death of the other generals, Franco quickly became his faction's only leader.

Franco received military support from local fascist, monarchist and right-wing groups, and also from Hitler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Fascist Italy. Leaving half a million dead, the war was eventually won by Franco in 1939. He established an autocratic dictatorship, Francoist Spain, which he defined as a totalitarian state, installing himself as head of state and government, with one legal political party: a merger of the monarchist party and the fascist party which had helped him, FET y de las JONS.