MADRID: Spain marks the 50th anniversary of Gen Francisco Franco’s death on Thursday, with political polarisation exacerbating deep-rooted and bitter divisions over the dictator’s legacy.

On Nov 20, 1975, an ailing 82-year-old Franco died peacefully in bed, in stark contrast to the brutality of his 36-year regime that saw opponents imprisoned, executed, and exiled.

He had also seized power through violence, overthrowing a democratic republic with the backing of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in a 1936-1939 civil war that killed hundreds of thousands.

The country’s path from dictatorship to democracy was fraught with difficulty over his memory, and a sweeping 1977 amnesty that benefited all sides sought to ease these tensions.

Since then, Spain has preferred “tiptoeing” around its painful past and is yet to hold a calm debate to agree on a shared position, said Paloma Roman, a political science professor at Madrid’s Complutense University.

“If you sweep the dust under the carpet instead of cleaning up, when you take away the carpet, the dust will be there,” said Roman.

A survey last month laid bare the enduring societal fractures Franco left behind, with a majority considering the dictatorship bad.

But more than one-fifth of respondents described it as “good” or “very good”, in line with inaccurate social media content that has spurred praise among young people with scant knowledge of the period, experts warn.

“It’s an education problem... The people who did not live through the dictatorship can be sucked into that narrative of rewriting the dictatorship,” said Roman.

Political battle

Current political polarisation has embittered those existing divisions, according to Roman.

The leftist government has made honouring the memory of the regime’s victims one of its flagship policies — to the fury of the conservative opposition that accuses it of reopening old wounds.

In 2019, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s govenment exhumed remains from an imposing mausoleum near Madrid constructed on Franco’s orders, in a bid to end its role as a triumphalist far-right shrine.

A 2022 democratic memory law created a register of victims and requires the removal of Francoist symbols from public spaces. This year, the government has promoted events to commemorate 50 years of freedom gained since Franco’s death, including full rights for women and the LGBTQ community.

‘Franco card’

The right-wing main opposition Popular Party accuses Sanchez of playing “the Franco card” to distract attention from corruption scandals affecting his relatives and the minority government, which struggles to pass legislation.

Far-right Vox, the third-largest formation in parliament, has described the government as “the worst” in 80 years — a period that includes Franco’s dictatorship.

No official commemorative events are planned for Nov 20, but the Francisco Franco Foundation and the late dictator’s family have organised a mass on that day to honour his memory.

The fascist Falange movement has planned a march in Madrid on Friday, with an anti-fascist counter-protest organised on Saturday in another sign of tensions over Franco’s memory.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2025