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At first glance, not many expected that Francisco Franco could become a strongman capable of imposing a harsh dictatorship over 40 years. He was a small-statured, squeaky-voiced army officer with a shaky grasp of civilian affairs and little personal appeal. However he achieved just that, before succumbing to natural causes in a Madrid hospital, 50 years ago this week.

The Warning of Superficial Ordinariness

Nowadays, Franco acts as a caution that superficial averageness is not an obstacle to the extremely driven. Behind the dull facade lay a elusive, clever operator. His drive was underpinned by an unyielding determination, a glib indifference to brutality and limitless self-esteem.

His admirers and defenders – among them on the newly buoyant extreme right in Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom – still claim Franco was never really a autocrat, but rather a cherished saviour from communism. This is incorrect, but dictators do not arise from nowhere.

"A significant portion of any society is made up of people who actively want authoritarian rule," French political theorist Jean-François Revel noted the following year Franco's demise: "either to exercise it themselves or – far more puzzlingly – to submit to it." Franco believed the identical thing: what people really wanted was to see and feel themselves governed.

The Truth of Violence and Oppression

Naturally, if Franco had been truly beloved, there would have been no necessity for his 1936 coup against an elected leftwing government, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the ensuing Spanish civil war. Nor would he have shot 20,000 individuals later.

Franco grabbed power in a Spain mired in post-empire lethargy – a powerful realm having vanished the previous century. Franco wanted to make Spain great again. He blamed foreigners. They were plundering the nation's wealth, plotting against the country as part of a Marxist-Jewish-masonic plot, or poisoning Spanish minds with external ideologies: democratic systems, socialism, communism, and his bizarre bugbear, Freemasonry.

A Deliberately Slow and Violent War

His war was intentionally prolonged and brutal in occupied areas, accompanied by a ruthless elimination of opponents in an attempt to "purify" this tainted Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of allegedly "virile" men and obedient women, whose bodily autonomy, offspring, employment and possessions were cut, shelved, or handed over to husbands and fathers.

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

Starvation and Isolation

However, this was incorrect. The immediate result was starvation, with people perishing in urban areas in 1940 and 1945. While traveling on a victory tour through the towns of Jaén and Málaga, people begged at his car window. "Señor Franco, for God’s sake, a piece of bread," they said. Even Nazi officials in Spain, his supporters, complained that a impressive exterior hid the ghastly truth. By supporting Hitler and Mussolini during the second world war, Franco made Spain a outcast nation, but he refused to step aside later. Spaniards sank further into misery.

Overconfidence and Political Revival

His belief that he was both selected by God and infallible meant he insisted on a lifelong term in charge. A British ambassador complained that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", unaware of his own incompetence. Luck, and a absence of clear doctrine, saved him. When the cold war started, he burnished his anti-communist credentials and the US restored his reputation.

Consequently, a disastrous economy was eventually rescued and compelled to liberalize by the US and the IMF. During the sixties, Spain was drawn into a regional economic growth that had begun earlier in neighboring countries. Abruptly, visitors were pouring on to Spanish beaches at coastal resorts or on the Costa del Sol. Many Spaniards still could not find work, but the remittances after emigrating to northern Europe also helped.

Authoritarian Control and Forgotten History

He gradually abandoned his most stupid ideas – from founding a new empire to making synthetic gasoline with a "miraculous" formula – but did not relinquish his primary goal of making Spaniards docile, obedient and disengaged. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 takeover onwards, deployed a rigid, propaganda-based press law, and ensured that multiple cohorts were schooled in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing Francoist curriculum. As late as the 1970s, autonomous political groups, democratic voting and trade unions remained prohibited.

Franco also infantilised Spaniards, deeming them incapable of self-rule. The scariest part of his legacy was that so many believed him.

Return to Violence and Medieval Execution

Once that fear-based agreement finally began to fall apart during the final years of his rule, he reverted to violent domination. Trigger-happy police, abuse, execution teams and even that medieval form of execution, the garrote, returned. The latter saw a iron band placed around a convict's throat and constricted until it snapped their spine or stopped their breathing; it was being used by a western European government on its population, during the seventies.

Anxiety and Democratic Change

However, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a highly skeptical Franco chronicler, recalls feeling sad as a boy, upon learning that Franco had passed away: "The sadness of that 12-year-old boy was felt at the time by countless citizens, who believed that the man who had just died had been the best possible solution for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "This was the narrative at educational institutions, in the media, on the TV … "

The main feeling in response to Franco's demise was fear. Ultimately, what occurs after the figure at the centre of a long-standing autocracy passes away? Authority was transferred to the young king Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that culminated in a public vote on the founding document that still holds today. Spain remains a vibrant, contentious democracy.

Heroic Narratives and Twisted Legacies

Heroic narratives arose to account for this. From the leftist perspective, it was the result of pressure from brave street protesters, students and workers who fought continually with riot police. For the right, it was a indication of institutional prudence. For Francoists, in the most twisted version of all, it constitutes a part of the dictator’s legacy.

And therein lies a issue. At the Madrid copy shop where I produced drafts of my recent book on the ruler, the leader, the proprietor kept maintaining that his parent claimed to have prospered under Franco. His father remembered, of course, only the prosperity of the sixties.

The Peril of Unawareness

During the promotion of the local version of the book, I have also discovered that the issues described by María Ramírez about childhood surrounded by silence about the regime are still present. University students tell me that their high school teachers were still skirting around the topic recently. As a parent of Spanish youth, that is a huge worry.

Ignorance is dangerous. It is understandable that almost one in five youth believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The only way to change that is to break the silence and educate the new generation what the Franco era was truly like.