Next Thursday, November 20th, could be a good day to start talking seriously and calmly about things that have been postponed for over fifty years. Everything seems to indicate that this won't be the case, but you never know: the maelstrom of politics always moves in strange and unpredictable ways. The petty squabbles of political maneuvering, on the other hand, can always be seen coming an hour in advance, fifty years ago.
In this sense, I reread some fragments of a seemingly insignificant book by Francisco Umbral, Sighs of Spain (Critical Point, 1975). Compared to works from the same period that are as extraordinary on a literary level as the surprising Mortal and pink (1975), this paper is a routine compilation of newspaper articles written a few months earlier. What makes it interesting is its publication date: October 1975. Most are articles about everyday life and political trifles. However, there are three or four that are of considerable interest in clearly anticipating certain inertias of the Transition that had already begun to surface during Franco's lifetime. The piece entitled "They searched me", for example, is significant. Preparing for the consummation of biological factThe euphemism used to officially refer to Franco's death meant that the more astute among them were already distancing themselves from the regime. "So, it wasn't the Falangists, nor the Legionnaires, nor the priests, nor anyone else. But someone must have governed here, I suppose.""The regime dies killing and committing political aberrations as monumental as the," Umbral ironically observes on page 80. sale of full Spanish citizens, even with national identity cards, in the case of Western Sahara. Everyone wants to wash their hands of it. Everyone wants to gloss it over with some kind of whitewash.
However, today, half a century later, many people accept that legacy as normal or even tacitly embrace it. It's worth noting that these are two distinct attitudes. The first is by no means a minority view: it forms part of the ideological foundation of the People's Party (PP), founded by the former Francoist minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne, as well as sectors of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), such as those surprisingly represented today by Felipe González and several regional party leaders. The second attitude, the assertive one, is deeply rooted in Vox's founding principles. Fifty years go by quickly, you see... It should be noted that in many cases this isn't a matter of forgetfulness, but rather of a lack of inhibition.
A good book for understanding this historical journey, which until recently was dismissed as improbable, is Francoism in the time of TrumpBy Francisco Marco Álvaro. If Dwight D. Eisenhower's visit to Spain on December 21, 1959, symbolized the end of the Franco regime's international isolation and its acceptance as a US ally at the height of the Cold War, Donald Trump's complicity with Santiago Abascal repositions him as a "normal" leader, not an extremist. The 1959 visit reinforced the idea that Spain was a reliable ally in the fight against communism at a time when the Cold War shaped international relations. Current photos of Trump and Abascal return Spain to its role as a loyal ally within the context of the new global authoritarianism, which includes Putin himself—he is the key player, in fact: without him, Trump's first victory would not have been possible. Álvaro's essay thus dissects a process of genuine normalization that only fifteen or twenty years ago seemed like a pipe dream. Ynestrillas and his associates, to put it simply, represented a token, marginal, and unviable form of Francoism in terms of parliamentary arithmetic. Vox, however, could become, even in the short term, the main opposition party.
This is no longer a joke. What has happened? "Today's far-right parties fill a void, just as their 20th-century predecessors did. They give meaning and a strong sense of belonging to an individual who has lost faith in democracy and its operators," says Francesc-Marc Álvaro on page 178 of that essay.
Fifty years may pass quickly, but for the hundreds of thousands of Sahrawis who have languished in one of the most inhospitable corners of the planet, they have likely dragged on with intolerable slowness. Thanks to Trump's approval, among others, the illegal annexation of a territory that had been a fully-fledged Spanish province since April 19, 1961, has finally been completed. Francoism is alive and well. Let's see how the next fifty years go.
