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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1_781.jpg]]
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3->'''Sam Tyler:''' This place is like Guantanamo Bay.\
4'''Gene Hunt:''' Give over, it's nothing like Spain.
5-->-- ''Series/{{Life on Mars|2006}}''
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7UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} under the rule of UsefulNotes/FranciscoFranco, from 1939 to 1975, following the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishCivilWar Civil War]].
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9An era of cultural restrictions, human rights violations and for a time, international isolation ([[WorldWarII/TheNeutralNations Spain was neutral]] in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, but was pro-Axis for much of it). To his supporters, however, he was seen as a strongman and "Defender of Christendom," if only because he fought against a pretty anti-clerical Republic (infamously including a symbolic execution of a ''statue'' of the sacred heart - [[http://www.executedtoday.com/2010/08/07/1936-the-sacred-heart-by-spanish-leftists/ this blog post]] gives the picture and reasons to doubt its authenticity, while [[https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/swphotojournalism/m629-f02-19.html this library article]] shows the original photo, proving its authenticity, as well as describing its source) during the Spanish Civil War. Franco's regime had several phases from more openly fascist until the end of World War II (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Maquis Spanish Maquis]] TheRemnant of Civil War era anti-Franco fighters was not fully crushed until the 1960s - largely because Franco refused to hand out an "amnesty for surrender" deal and many fought on out of sheer desperation) to autarkist authoritarian immediately after the war (Spain after 1945 had basically no friends outside the Iberian Peninsula and almost no foreign trade) to anti-communist authoritarian conservative-technocratic afterwards. Spain's tourism boom started in the last years of Franco's reign when he had surrounded himself with a cadre of Opus Dei sycophants as well as more hardline factions known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_(Francoism) "El Búnker"]]. Most historians generally regard his regime and ideology as an ultraconservative authoritarianism, with more in common with the dictatorships/juntas of South America than with UsefulNotes/FascistItaly and UsefulNotes/NaziGermany.
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11Towards the end of his rule, Franco sought to restore the Spanish royal family, then in exile. The rightful king[[labelnote:complications]]Although the war had in part been fought over [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlism Carlism]], an ideology that argued the descendants of Isabella II (all Spanish Kings after the Bourbon Restoration had laid their claim to the throne thru their descent from her) were not legitimate claimants to the throne - conveniently the last undisputed Carlist claimant died in 1936 And Franco spent the remainder of his life playing various Carlist factions against each other, thus marginalizing the movement. Furthermore, the last King of Spain prior to the Second Republic, Alfonso XIII had three legitimate sons alive by the outbreak of the civil war - Infante Juan was the ''youngest'' of them, but the two older brothers [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso,_Prince_of_Asturias_(1907%E2%80%931938) Alfonso]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infante_Jaime,_Duke_of_Segovia Jaime]] renounced their claim to the throne in 1933 - whether those renunciations should be respected is a question for royalism-nerds to debate. Interestingly Jaime's son Alfonso (Alfonso XIII's son Alfonso died without legitimate descendants) was married to Franco's daughter and thus the pretender through that line - the seniormost direct male line from Alfonso XIII disregarding abdications - [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Alphonse_de_Bourbon Louis Alphonse de Bourbon]] is both a grandson of Alfonso XIII and Franco - but he was only an infant when Franco died.[[/labelnote]], the Infante Juan, was too liberal to be trusted and Franco instead picked Juan's son Juan Carlos who was still young enough to be groomed into a Francoist mentality.
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13Unfortunately for Franco and his supporters (but fortunately for the democratic world), Juan Carlos was not the [[ObfuscatingStupidity dutiful puppet]] the dictator supposed; the prince was secretly in contact with democrats and foreign political leaders. When Franco finally died and Juan Carlos took the throne, the new king swept away the old regime and instituted the modern, democratic Spain, though not before having to publicly stand up to a putsch attempt by some hard-lined Francoists: King Juan Carlos went public reminding everyone he was the King, he wanted a proper constitutional monarchy beholden to the people and have the fascists crushed. He got those things in short order and by the end, even the head of the national Communist party was cheering, "God save the King!"
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15[[RunningGag This just in]]: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalissimo_Francisco_Franco_is_still_dead Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead]].
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17Although the transition to democracy was successful, the regime left deep scars in the Spanish society that can still be felt up to this day. Especially since most of the people in power today were raised during Franco's rule. In many ways, Spain as a whole is StillFightingTheCivilWar as none of the issues that led to the whole sordid affair from 1936 to 1939 was talked about for ''forty years'' afterwards and only ''very gradually'' even after that. ETA also started their violent campaigns with an attack on Franco's Prime Minister and heir apparent [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Carrero_Blanco Luis Carrero Blanco]], which won them some sympathies among non-Basque Spaniards which they subsequently thoroughly lost after Franco's death. Franco's regime also suppressed virtually all expressions of non-Castillian culture, particularly Catalan and Basque, giving the independence movement in this regions a claim to being heirs to the anti-Franco movement. While the Zapatero government (2004-2011) dug up some Franco era mass graves and tried to at least get a somewhat accurate historical assessment of Spain's recent history, no such thing happened during the subsequent Rajoy (2011-2018) government. Rajoy's successor Pedro Sánchez tried to move Franco's remains from Valle de los Caídos, a rather pompous monument dedicated to "all (Catholic) victims of the Civil War" (and Franco, and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera) but had to call a snap election before he could put the already passed law to that effect into action. The corpse was eventually moved in October 2019, between two snap elections that saw Sánchez being reelected as Prime Minister, and now rests in a small private gravesite, property of the Franco family. There is an old joke regarding the continuity of Francoist elites where Franco (somehow awakening from death) asks who is running what in Spain and hearing a familiar (last) name only to be told "no no, his son" or "no no, his nephew" until [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Fraga Manuel Fraga]] is mentioned, who indeed started his political career in Francoist Spain and remained influential on the political Right until his death in 2015.
18----
19!!In fiction:
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21* ''Series/FortyFiveRPM''
22* ''Series/ElCaso''
23* ''Film/DeathOfACyclist''
24* ''Film/PansLabyrinth''
25* ''Film/TheSpiritOfTheBeehive''
26* ''Series/{{Velvet}}''

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