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At first glance, hardly anyone expected that Francisco Franco might become a authoritarian ruler capable of enforcing a harsh dictatorship for four decades. He appeared as a small-statured, squeaky-voiced army officer with a poor understanding of non-military matters and no charisma. Yet he accomplished precisely that, prior to passing away naturally in a hospital in Madrid, 50 years ago this week.

The Cautionary Tale of Outward Mediocrity

Even today, Franco serves as a caution that outward mediocrity is no barrier to the extremely driven. Beneath the unremarkable exterior lay a slippery, shrewd strategist. Franco's ambition was supported by an unyielding determination, a casual disregard to brutality and unbounded self-esteem.

His admirers and defenders – among them on the resurgent far right in Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom – still claim Franco was not truly a dictator, but instead a cherished rescuer from communism. This is incorrect, but dictators do not emerge from nowhere.

"A significant portion of every society is made up of people who actively want tyranny," French political theorist Jean-François Revel noted the following year Franco's death: "to wield it personally or – far more puzzlingly – to yield 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 need for his 1936 coup against an elected leftwing government, or for the 500,000 fatalities of the subsequent civil conflict. He would not have shot 20,000 individuals later.

Franco grabbed power in a Spain still slumped in post-empire lethargy – a mighty empire 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 foreign ideas: democratic systems, leftist ideas, Marxist doctrine, and his bizarre bugbear, Freemasonry.

A Calculated, Brutal Conflict

His war was intentionally prolonged and violent behind the lines, alongside a ruthless elimination of opponents in an attempt to "cleanse" this tainted Spain. His new Spain also had to be a place of allegedly "virile" men and subservient women, whose rights to their bodies, children, employment and possessions were cut, postponed, or transferred to male relatives.

Following a punitive win, Franco confined the nation into a corset of self-reliance and threw away the key. Economic self-sufficiency was adopted. International investment and products were avoided. "We have everything we need," he said.

Starvation and Isolation

However, this was incorrect. The direct outcome was starvation, with people perishing in urban areas in the early and mid-1940s. While traveling on a triumphal journey through the towns of southern regions, people begged at his car window. "Please, Mr. Franco, some bread," they said. Even German representatives in Spain, his allies, protested that a impressive exterior hid the ghastly truth. By backing Hitler and Mussolini during the World War II, Franco made Spain a pariah state, but he refused to step aside later. The Spanish people descended deeper into misery.

Self-Complacency and Cold War Rehabilitation

Franco's conviction that he was both divinely chosen and always right meant he demanded a permanent rule in charge. A British ambassador remarked that he lived in a "heavy mist of self-complacency", unaware of his own incompetence. Luck, and a absence of clear doctrine, saved him. As the Cold War began, he burnished his opposition to communism and the United States restored his reputation.

Consequently, a disastrous economy was eventually rescued and forced to open up 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. Suddenly, tourists were pouring on to Spanish beaches at Benidorm or on the Costa del Sol. Many Spaniards still could not find work, but the money they sent home after moving abroad also helped.

Authoritarian Control and Forgotten History

He gradually abandoned his most stupid ideas – from establishing a new realm to making synthetic gasoline with a "magic" formula – but did not relinquish his central aim of making Spaniards tame, compliant and politically apathetic. He devoted extensive resources in state terror from the 1936 takeover forward, implemented a strict, propaganda-based press law, and ensured that multiple cohorts were educated in a deeply traditional and memory-erasing state-approved syllabus. Even into the seventies, independent political parties, free and fair elections and labor organizations remained banned.

He also treated as children Spaniards, considering them unable of self-rule. The scariest part of his legacy was that so many believed him.

Reversion to Brutality and Ancient Methods

Once that fear-based agreement finally began to fall apart during the last decade of his regime, he reverted to violent domination. Trigger-happy police, abuse, firing squads and even that ancient killing method, the garrote, returned. This method saw a iron band fastened around a convict's throat and constricted until it broke their neck or cut off their air supply; it was being used by a European administration on its population, in 1974.

Anxiety and Democratic Change

Nevertheless, the historian Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, a deeply critical Franco biographer, remembers experiencing sorrow as a child, upon learning that Franco had passed away: "The sadness of that youngster was felt at the time by countless citizens, who thought that the man who had just died had been the optimal answer for a country that was difficult to govern," he wrote. "This was the narrative at school, in the press, on the television … "

The predominant sensation in response to Franco's demise was anxiety. Ultimately, what happens after the figure at the centre of a decades-long dictatorship passes away? Authority was transferred to the young king Juan Carlos, who oversaw a period of change that ended with a public vote on the founding document that still holds today. Spain remains a vibrant, disputatious democracy.

Inspiring Stories and Distorted Heritage

Heroic narratives arose to account for this. From the leftist perspective, it was the result of pressure from courageous demonstrators, students and workers who fought continually with riot police. For the right, it was a sign of establishment wisdom. For his supporters, in the most twisted version of all, it forms part of the autocrat's heritage.

And therein lies a issue. At the Madrid copy shop where I printed out drafts of my latest publication on the ruler, the leader, the proprietor kept insisting that his father stated he had lived well under Franco. His father remembered, of course, only the economic boom of the 1960s.

The Peril of Unawareness

During the promotion of the local version of the publication, I have also realised that the issues described by María Ramírez about childhood amid quiet about the regime are still with us. University students tell me that their secondary educators were still avoiding the topic recently. As a parent of Spanish youth, that is a huge worry.

Ignorance is risky. It is understandable that nearly 20% young people believe his regime was beneficial for Spain. The sole method to change that is to end the quiet and educate the new generation what the Franco era was really about.