Memory is sensitive and, if you pull the thread –as was done this Tuesday at the Pedralbes Monastery in a new session of the Pedralbes Dialogues, organized in collaboration with ARA and under the intellectual direction of philosopher Daniel Gamper and the moderation of Antoni Bassas—, it can open many debates. Starting from the statement Remembering, doing justice, with Núria Ricart Ulldemolins, professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona, the discussion was about how thinking about the past is often a way of doing justice and, above all, about memory in public space. For more than twenty years, in the field of memory, there has been an effort to recover the memories of the vanquished and to reclaim what has been silenced. Ricart admitted that she came to political memory because that was where she found the most interesting projects: “It is where the most effective and radical art is,” she said.

Now that Vox has revived the Francoist spirit and made it blatant, it's worth explaining exactly what the dictatorship was. Let's be blunt: it was a savage act and a complete disaster. Mediocrity in power for forty years. Who better than an authoritative voice like that of the historian Josep Fontana (1931-2018) to provide a summary? His perspective is as informed as it is relentless. FrancoismJoaquim Albareda and Jaume Claret have compiled for the Eumo publishing house a devastating selection of Fontana's texts on the period. It was not his main subject of study, but it was an obsession, a self-imposed professional, historical, and civic-political duty.

Hunger in post-war Spain, despite the dictatorship's attempts to mask it, is quite present in literature. We perceive it in novels such as Nothing (1945), by Carmen Laforet; The beehive (1951), by Camilo José Cela; Time of silence (1961), by Luis Martín Santos, and The Diamond Square (1962), by Mercè Rodoreda. the historian Michelangelo del Arco Blanco (Granada, 1979) goes a step further: it documents and demonstrates it in The Spanish famine (Crítica, 2025). He speaks of the victims of hunger but also of those responsible. "All the great famines of the 20th century are related to political decisions. In Spain, it was a weapon of war against the vanquished," he states.

A specter is haunting Europe, and this time it is fascism. The rise of far-right parties, nostalgic for European fascist dictators—such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco—has led to a resurgence of historical revisionism and the whitewashing of dictatorships. In France, a mass held this November in honor of Marshal Pétain, the French head of state during the Vichy regime and a collaborator with the Nazis during the occupation, has caused a political earthquake. In Spain, the message of the right wing, and especially that of the far-right Vox party, which downplays Francoism and the thousands executed, the torture, and the exile, has borne fruit. The CIS (Spanish Center for Sociological Research) recently published a survey revealing that two out of ten young Spaniards believe the dictatorship was positive. Just a few days earlier, the former king published a statement in France. his memoir in which he praised the dictator without reservations and argued that "almost forty years of our history cannot be erased as if nothing happened."

"Fifty years later, we're taking Franco to Modelo prison; we're doing poetic justice," says historian Andreu Mayayo, who curates the project with fellow historian José Manuel Rua and the UB's Center for International Historical Studies. And after Franco, what? (1965-1975)The exhibition, which can be visited in the former prison in the Eixample district, is a journey through the final years of the dictatorship. It speaks of Franco's agony, but also of what might have happened and the different scenarios envisioned by the anti-Franco movement. At the end, there is a ballot box where visitors can vote among several alternatives: from a Franco regime without Franco to the political and social democracy of the communists, including Catalan third ways, among many other possibilities. When the exhibition closes on July 19, the results will be published.

The victims of the dictatorship have repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, sought justice in Spain. Sant Julià de Ramis attempted to address the issue of the plunder in 2019. The Gironès town council claimed 9,786 Republican pesetas from that era, equivalent to €136,123.26. After the Council of Ministers rejected the request, Sant Julià de Ramis filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, also unsuccessful. With the Democratic Memory Law, passed in 2022, the Caldes de Montbui Town Council hopes to succeed with a new claim. It will not be easy, because while the Spanish government committed to documenting the plunder, the legislation does not specify how the victims can be compensated.

A sinister black Cadillac Fleetwood Seventy-Five, escorted by motorcycle police, triumphantly travels along the Barcelona-Girona highway while a crowd of children in shorts enthusiastically wave small Spanish flags. The photograph, taken during the official visit of dictator Francisco Franco to Girona on May 17, 1960, has become the cover of the book. Francoism in GironaThe book, which the Girona City Council has deliberately delayed in publishing as the official book of the Sant Narcís Fairs to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the dictator's death, is authored by seven historians from Girona and includes a foreword by the mayor, Lluc Salellas. It avoids simplistic views, and some of its articles, particularly the one by Josep Clara, Girona's most renowned historian of the Franco regime, meticulously detail, with exceptional archival insights, the tenacious and persistent repression that was relentless against the vanquished.

Three weeks after the publication in France of the emeritus king's memoirs, Juan Carlos I gave an interview this Wednesday on the public television channel France 3 in which he elaborated on ideas from the book. ReconciliationIn a very friendly conversation, the father of the current King of Spain reviews the key moments of the Transition and speaks about Felipe VI, for whom he always has kind words. However, the King Emeritus believes that the Spanish political situation and the global context have placed him in a difficult position. "He is a good king, but he is going through a very difficult time and we must support him," he says. When the interviewer, journalist Stéphane Bern, asks him why he is going through a difficult time, Juan Carlos offers a vague answer. "The political moment, in all countries, is very difficult," he replies before the interviewer moves on to another topic. In the book, The former monarch makes direct criticisms of the Spanish government, which she accuses of weakening the monarchy and democracy.as well as the pro-independence political parties, but in the interview he doesn't mention the issue directly and simply says that his son is going through a difficult time.

Franco visits Lleida in 1963. There's a sweet, surreal, Lleida-style lemon grove moment. Lleida welcomes the dictator, and there are posters like this one: "Franco, welcome to Lleida." It's not a linguistic-cultural protest: it's the ceremony of the confusion of a country that has been replaced and is genetically revealing what it truly is. Franco sees the posters as he crosses the bridge in the Rolls-Royce. He glides at flea speed along the bench on Blondel Street that overlooks the Segre River. Spanish flags. Applause. From all those people from Lleida who don't even know how to speak Castilian Spanish and who are striking at what is killing them.

On November 22, 1975, Juan Carlos was sworn in as King of Spain before the Francoist Cortes. He affirmed that Franco's regime, which had left half a million dead, had "the political legitimacy that arose on July 18, 1936, amidst so many sacrifices, so much suffering, sad but necessary, so that the Nation could once again chart its own course." Juan Carlos spoke of Franco as an "exceptional man" and announced that he would not hesitate to do whatever was necessary to defend the principles of the Movement to which he had just sworn. Giles Tremlett explains this excellently in his insightful biography of Franco.

"We inform you that on Thursday, November 20th, in the afternoon, an activity will take place that could disrupt the usual silence in the library rooms." This was the only warning posted on the door of the Ateneo de Barcelona library. Its users could hardly have imagined that, fifty years after Franco's death, the riot police would return. They did so this Thursday, shortly after 6 p.m., using the same language they had employed during the dictatorship, and with the same aggression:Damn it. Everyone at home and the women in the kitchen."," was their way of greeting.

What's happening today? 50 years since Franco died It is news that support for democracy in Catalonia is at its lowest level since 2012.

In France, the country where thousands of Republicans went into exile after the Spanish Civil War, there are also those nostalgic for Francoism. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco's death this Thursday, the Notre-Dame de la Consolation chapel, located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, very close to the Spanish embassy, will host a mass on November 26th in homage to Franco and the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. After the religious service, a fraternal luncheon will be held for all participants.

"The right to get married." "The right to get divorced." "The right to be a monarchist or a republican." "The right to have an abortion." "The right to have arrived in a dinghy and have your son play for the Spanish national team." These are just some examples of the campaign that has begun in different official languages of the State entitled Democracy is your power. The campaignWith advertisements, videos, banners, etc., it is part of the events taking place on the occasion of 50th anniversary of Franco's death. While approximately 150 activities have been carried out so far, the plan is to carry out another 480 between November and December.

Francoism was dying, but it wanted to go down fighting, and on September 27, 1975, the regime carried out its last five executions. Two alleged members of ETA and three from FRAP were shot after torture and a judicial process riddled with irregularities and flagrant injustices, in accordance with a law created specifically for this purpose and applied retroactively. The death sentences generated a huge wave of indignation and mobilizations both within and beyond Spain's borders, with attacks on many Spanish embassies. Pope Paul VI pleaded for "clemency," the president of Mexico called for Spain's suspension from the United Nations, and the president of Sweden walked through the streets of Stockholm with a collection box to raise money "for the freedom of Spain." But the regime responded with violence. In fact, the parish priest of Hoyo de Manzanares, the Madrid municipality where the FRAP members were executed, told Interview"More police arrived in buses to cheer the executions. Many were drunk. When I went to administer last rites to one of the men being shot, he was still breathing. A lieutenant approached and fired the coup de grâce without giving me time to move away. Blood splattered me."

There are reasons to suppose that, if the dictator Franco were to rise from the dead (or if he could simply follow current events with otherworldly eyes, watching television, for example, in the company of his good friend Adolf Hitler, as we see him doing in Miquel Ferreres's cartoons in this newspaper), he might feel reasonably satisfied with his life. He might also be satisfied with the effects of the civil war he provoked, along with a mix of rebellious military officers, unscrupulous fascists (if you'll pardon the redundancy), and bishops who did prefer to have their kingdom in this world, accompanied (let's not forget, now as a hundred years ago) by a divisive and poisonous press that was truly vitriolic.

1. Get ready to tell the tale. In the coming days, we'll be seeing countless images of Arias Navarro, in black and white, announcing what half of Spain desired and the other half feared:Franco is dead"Even the most outlandish stories will feature the then-Prime Minister, his voice hoarse from the regime's brutality. At that time, fifty years ago, TVE was the only television channel, and the second channel—UHF—didn't even come close to reaching the entire Iberian Peninsula. Forty percent of Spanish territory could only watch one channel. The story of the dictator's death is also interesting from a communications standpoint. Who did the King entrust with forming a government? A young Adolfo Suárez, who for four years had been the Director General of Spanish Radio and Television during the final throes of Franco's regime. Not at all self-conscious."

Franco was very good at marketing operationsHe knew how to perpetuate his image and adapt it to changing times. November 20th will mark the 50th anniversary of his death. He never tweeted, of course. However, his ghost is very much present on social media. While the far right puffs out its chest more than ever and praises Francoism with impunity, or hangs the label of murderer on Lluís Companys from a window of the Catalan Parliament, the judiciary remains an insurmountable barrier for the victims of Francoism.

When Pedro Sánchez announced that in 2025 he would organize a series of institutional events to commemorate fifty years of "freedom," the opposition reacted angrily. "They can exhume Franco 100 times and act nostalgic for the conflict between Spaniards, but that won't stop the rest of us from wanting to build a future together [...]. How tiresome," said the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the far-right Vox party went even further, adding that one can speak "well or ill" of the dictator. This episode is a paradigmatic example of how, half a century later, the figure of Franco is a divisive element in Spanish politics. There is no consensus on historical memory between the right and the left, and, moreover, there is a new glorification of Francoism that is taking root in the younger generations. The clearest example is the speech given by Vox deputy Manuel Mariscal, 33, from the podium in Congress: "And thanks to social media, many young people are discovering that the period after the Civil War was not a dark time, as the government portrays it, but rather one of reconstruction, progress, and reconciliation."

Pierre Vilar used to tell his students that "understanding the past means learning to read a newspaper." It seems like a simple phrase, but it's also a warning. To make it a reality, two conditions would be needed: a historical consensus born from memory and courageous newspapers that escape dogmatism and entrenched positions. Today, if we read the newspapers, what we discover is not only the persistent return of Francoism, but our inability to confront it head-on. If some young people read them, they might even find a benign and distorted view of history with complete impunity and shamelessness.