For Sant Jordi, you can also buy history books. In fact, it is advisable to do so: to buy and read good history books, now that revisionisms, denials, and pseudo-historians are once again occupying platforms and spaces in the media, in addition to flooding social networks. History is one of the most decisive areas of knowledge in the construction of societies and civilizations: without knowing where we come from, we cannot know where we are or who we are, and we are more exposed to lying, self-serving, and – these indeed – indoctrination narratives, which some are interested in spreading to seize control of power.Two excellent books have recently arrived in bookstores to understand what Francoism and Nazism were, and to comprehend the danger posed by the rise of new fascisms and far-right movements. These are the volume El franquisme, by Josep Fontana, published by Eumo, and the essay Els irresponsables, by Johann Chapoutot, published by Angle with translation by Andreu Gomila.Edited by the historian —and Fontana's disciple— Jaume Claret, El franquisme brings together conferences and other texts by one of the most outstanding Catalan historians of the second half of the 20th century, and one of those who analyzed the Francoist regime most penetratingly and incisively, as was Josep Fontana. Reading this book, which combines rigor with the good writing that was its hallmark, disproves and invalidates the relativistic, nostalgic, and amiable views of the forty years of dictatorship that are disseminated by parties like Vox or even the PP, and by their intellectual and media circles. Fontana precisely describes several fundamental aspects of the regime, from the creation and aggrandizement of the figure of the Caudillo to the ideas that Francoism applied in economics, through the involvement of the Spanish Church in the regime's governance, otherwise known as national-catholicism. An agile, yet in-depth, look at black Spain, and, of course, furiously anti-Catalan, which the current nationalist right wants to return to power. A Spain that, contrary to what is often made to believe, is not at all distant in time.The irresponsibles have an explanatory subtitle (Who brought Hitler to power?). Its author, Johann Chapoutot, Professor of Contemporary History at the Sorbonne University, explains how Hitler's rise to power through elections was not a matter of chance, but the result of a series of powers (economic, business, financial, media) who were convinced that a government of the national socialist party would be useful to their interests. These prominent figures of German society were also sure that they would easily control an individual like Hitler and prevent him from losing control and committing excesses. We already know how it all ended, and the parallels with all those who seek to whitewash and normalize Trumps, Netanyahus, Mileis, or Melonis with the argument that they have been voted for are so clear that they do not need to be emphasized.

Joan Vinyes Miralpeix (Anglès, 1918 - Barcelona, 2009) could not long resist the hypocrisy of priestly life, the total submission of the Church to Francoism, nor the celibacy (only apparent) that his condition as a priest imposed on him. All these contradictions, and some more, converged in his last mass, on Sunday, October 1, 1950, when from the pulpit of the church of l'Escala he announced to his astonished parishioners that he was ceasing to be a priest. It was the first case of apostasy in Francoist Girona, which tried by all means to bring him back into the fold of the Church, even through institutional conspiracies to make him appear mad and lock him up in a mental asylum. "In the time of national-Catholicism, it was an act of total rebellion and they could not tolerate it, which is why they considered that he could only be mad," explains Josep Maria Vinyes i Vilà, who has taken care of the memoirs written by his father.

For the reformist sectors of the Franco regime, the monarchy established by General Franco was a red line that could not be crossed. Regardless of popular will, the king was an indisputable institution, guaranteeing the continuity of the system and its servants, and also allowing for a controlled transition. A referendum on the form of government was impossible, but not only that: everything that represented the image, value, and symbol of the Republic, such as the tricolor flag, was persecuted for several years. The struggle continued beyond the approval of the 1978 Constitution, beyond the years of institutional and political transition.

This novel was born during a conversation among friends after a meal, inspired by the testimony of one of their mothers. It's an unknown, harsh, and anonymous story that portrays the inner workings of families who "lived well" under the Franco regime in Girona. It also marks the debut in the genre of lawyer Benet Salellas, former CUP deputy and currently leading the defense of Santos Cerdánand a finalist for the 45th Justo M. Casero Short Novel Prize. "I think we all tend to write what we like to read," he explains about the project's genesis. "I love fiction; I studied Greek philology before studying law. I've always had a bit of a cultured side, and I was challenged to try to write a novel. I wanted it to be anonymous, so if it's validated, I'll feel more empowered in some way."

A All Battles (Column), lawyer Magda Oranich (Barcelona, 1945) records her tireless fight for human rights and, more particularly, for women's rights, after six decades of activism.

While thousands of people fled as best they could toward the French border, on February 4, 1939, at the Can Pol farmhouse in Montfullà, Bescanó, where the Generalitat (Catalan government) had stored works of art from Tarragona to protect them from the war, a woman and her children awaited the arrival of Franco's troops. The woman in question was Rosa Sendrós Carbonella, the wife of Pere Rius, the curator of the Reus Museum, and she had the delicate task of handing over the keys to the storage facility to the rebel soldiers. This anecdote perfectly illustrates the story the exhibition aims to tell. Recovered from the enemy. Francoist caches at the MNACwhich can be seen at the National Art Museum of Catalonia until June 28. In the first room, there is another document that demonstrates this commitment by Catalan institutions to safeguarding heritage: a sketch made by the archivist Agustí Duran i Sanpere showing all the collections distributed throughout Catalonia, to facilitate the work of the victors.

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.

Bruce Springsteen has composed a song in response to police killings in the United States that is reminiscent of the protest songs of the bloody final years of the Franco dictatorship.Streets of Minneapolisdialogues in time with What do those people want?, Death bells, Let's say no either In MargalidaTo name a few, because, unfortunately, more had to be written than we would have liked.

Spain remains at a crossroads when debating the Civil War. Arturo Pérez-Reverte has organized a series of debates in Seville with the less-than-ideal title 1936: The war we all lost (In the end, they put the slogan in question marks to soften the blow of criticism.) The writer David Uclés, who had committed to attending, withdrew upon learning that José María Aznar and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros would be participating. And the inevitable backlash on social media, including threats of boycott, precipitated the cancellation of the conference. Pérez-Reverte lamented the lost opportunity for the "reconciliation" of Spaniards. But the best way to come to terms with the past is to accept it, and accepting the Civil War means admitting that there were victors and vanquished, and that the victors behaved as such long after the guns fell silent.

Looking back This is an ARA podcast that explores the silences, struggles, and wounds of the Franco regime to understand how this past continues to shape the present.

"Praised be the most holy sacrament"," the nun would announce loudly in the middle of the dormitory in the morning. And they, half asleep in bed and with their eyes still stuck shut with sleep, would answer in unison mechanically:May He be forever blessed and praised"The nuns would wake them up like that day after day. Maria Forns remembers it perfectly, even though it was more than half a century ago. She was 16 years old when she was placed in a convent against her will.

At this point, the debate about language and immigration is outdated, because anyone who denies the evidence is deceiving themselves and others: That Catalonia had 4 million inhabitants in 1960 and now has 8 million is an irrefutable fact. That this doubling is due to immigration is a certainty. What is debatable is whether the predominance of Spanish is due to the linguistic zeal of the newcomers, or whether what we are experiencing is a logical consequence of the sociopolitical context.

Joan Baptista Peset Aleixandre was a prestigious Valencian doctor, professor of legal medicine and rector of the University of Valencia, shot by the Franco regime in May 1941. He came from a brilliant liberal lineage of Valencian doctors and intellectuals (his father was one of the honorary presidents of the First Congress of Doctors, Popular Front in the 1936 elections, integrated into the party of Manuel Azaña, Republican Left).

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.

The 50th anniversary of the dictator's death has brought to the forefront the memory of the most direct anti-Franco struggles, with their heroes and victims. So, the younger generations—those with short memories—may have been left with the impression that the majority of Catalan—and Spanish—society was anti-Franco. And that's not true. What was truly widespread was what was called "sociological Francoism." This is what allowed the dictator to continue killing, with five executions two months before he died in bed. It is what meekly tolerated the restoration of a historically corrupt monarchy, one that has been bowing down and genuflecting for fifty years. And it was also popular support that made possible what some still praise as exemplary: a Transition without a break from the previous regime, which has allowed for the veneration of prominent Francoists—Adolfo Suárez there, Juan Antonio Samaranch here—without anyone ever having to face justice.

"I have no idea. I'd rather Franco die than be there." loose, slack and pendulum"He had to die one way or another." Here's the thing. Raimon's responseOn Wednesday, in response to a question from Helena Garcia Melero in the Everything is movingabout what he did when Franco died. It wasn't the only moment that made the audience laugh, even though he was talking about censorship during the dictatorship. But, really, I suppose that's just how it is: as absurd as it was, humor emerged. The writer and screenwriter Anna Manso, who was on the set, asked him what he would say to young people who downplay what the dictatorship and Francoism represented, and Raimon replied that it wouldn't do much for their parents—"we didn't listen to them either," he said, "when we were young." That's why he suggested it should be explained properly in schools, "where they learn." I was watching on TV, to talk about Mercè Ibarz's latest book, A girl in the city (Anagrama), a chronicle of her arrival in Barcelona (she is from Saidí), at seventeen years old. Raimon's words led me to a passage in the book where I think Ibarz says something important: "I often ask myself how it is that the word dictatorship So little has been heard and written about it in the years since. We say and write postwar period, Francoism, the regime, but dictatorship Not much. The emptiness of this non-word has permeated journalism and literature itself for decades. As if it were a generational word that didn't apply to those born after the seventies. Well, we're doing great. What could that mean? Isn't it even worth thinking about? Of course it is, it's worth thinking about. Once again, the importance of calling things by their name, of using words that have "full" content and a clear meaning.

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.

The next day, Franco was gone—but Francoism remained, motionless and with its hands still dripping with blood from that September 27, 1975. The crucial issue, and that's why they killed until the very last second, was that we were still here—this us majestic figures they could never kill, and the scars we still bear, including so many thousands of anonymous names, six thousand mass graves, a country in the gutter, 66,500 Catalans with open military court proceedings, or "the end of so many since that July," as Brossa would say. Five decades have passed, and there are those who continue to perversely confuse the ability to close wounds with the ability to reopen them, and those who, episcopalianly, confuse turning the page with leaving the book blank—not only unable to read it carefully and respectfully, but even unable to write and understand it. There is also an unbridled Bourbon monarchy reclaiming the dictator in the guise of a supposed best-sellerThat's still the case.Spaniards, Franco is dead", announced Arias Navarro, the butcher of Malaga, 50 years ago. And, in proper Catalan, the most faithful and appropriate clandestine translation would be "what more could we want?"

These weeks mark the fiftieth anniversary of the dictator's death and the restoration of the monarchy in Spain. A significant sector of the state establishment has sought to transform this anniversary into an uncritical celebration of the monarchy, presenting it as the natural antithesis of the dictatorship and little more than the democratic unifying force of a supposedly exemplary Transition. But this interpretation is a historical falsehood. To ignore that the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy was precisely a decision made by the Franco regime itself to guarantee the continuity of its fundamental elements is an insult to democratic intelligence. And for this reason, today it is essential to speak plainly to avoid a new collective amnesia.

It is extraordinarily surprising that people from the younger generations say so many absurd things about the Franco regime, and that some people from the older generations do as well. Is this due to a lack of knowledge? Or to ideologically biased misinformation? If it is due to a lack of knowledge, it should concern us greatly. If it is due to misinformation and ideology, it means that a part of the country, the one most deeply rooted in Francoism, has been busy praising it, while those who should have offered a different perspective have failed to do so. As an economic historian, I will offer a few insights into the economy under Franco, all drawn from the book I co-authored with Xavier Tafunell, Between Empire and Globalization: An Economic History of Contemporary Spain (There are versions in English and Spanish), which we have enriched and updated in various revisions from 2003 to 2021.