This fascinating biography by British historian Tremlett gives us dictator Francisco Franco’s Galician childhood, military school, and the “Africanist” apprenticeship in Spanish Morocco before the civil war that brought him to power. The book is also, inevitably, a concise history of Spain during the first three-quarters of the 20th century. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, Franco remained on the world stage until 1975. Tremlett describes him as a kind of dam that held back progress, despite “his lack of charisma, intellectual spark, ideological conviction or the kind of personal traits that Spaniards consider ‘simpático.’” He was, however, “fueled by relentless personal ambition and considerable luck.” Franco ruled for 39 years as the nation’s caudillo, or military strongman, not so much for power itself, but to prevent others from wielding it. He was forever caught between church and monarchy, his own reactionary position, and progressive Republicanism in a conflict that cost half a million lives. He also played both sides between the Axis and the Allies, depending on one for arms and the other for wheat. Wracked by indecision, he masked it as shrewdness. Stranded in Morocco at the outbreak of the uprising, he depended on Italian and German planes to airlift 24,000 of his troops into Andalucia, the first air bridge in history. Franco was a brilliant military tactician, but waited months before pressing his advantage invading Madrid, his own capital. Relations with the church soured as it became more liberal, and his desire for autocracy stunted economic development. It took the tourist boom of the 1960s and the return of workers from abroad to give his oppressed people a view of their isolation from the prospering outside world. His late years were marked by physical decline from Parkinson’s disease and terrorist attacks by Basque and Catalan separatists. Fifty years after his death, the book offers a fresh look at a ruthless leader.
