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Francisco Franco Quotes

Francisco Franco Bahamonde was a Spanish general who ruled over Spain as a military dictator from 1939, after the nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War, until his death in 1975. This period in Spanish history is commonly known as Francoist Spain.

During the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera 1923-1930, Franco was promoted general at age 33, the youngest in Europe. As a conservative and a monarchist, Franco opposed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a democratic secular republic in 1931. With the 1936 elections, the conservative Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups lost by a narrow margin, and the leftist Popular Front came to power. Intending to overthrow the republic, Franco followed other generals in launching a coup that failed to take control of most of the country and precipitated the Spanish Civil War. With the death of the other generals, Franco quickly became his faction's only leader. Franco gained military support from various authoritarian regimes and groups, especially Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, while the Republican side was supported by Spanish communists and anarchists as well as the Soviet Union, Mexico, and the International Brigades. In 1939, Franco won the war, which claimed half a million lives. He established a military dictatorship. Franco proclaimed himself Head of State and Government under the title El caudillo. In April 1937, Franco merged the fascist and traditionalist political parties in the rebel zone , as well as other conservative and monarchist elements, into FET y de las JONS. At the same time he outlawed all other political parties, and thus Spain became a one-party state.

Upon his rise to power, Franco implemented policies that repressed political opponents and dissenters, as many as 400,000 of whom died through the use of forced labor and executions in the concentration camps his regime operated. During World War II, he espoused neutrality as Spain's official wartime policy. However, he provided military support to the Axis in numerous ways: he allowed German and Italian ships and submarines to use Spanish harbors and ports, the Abwehr operated in Spain, and the Blue Division fought alongside the European Axis against the Soviet Union until 1944. Although Franco's Spain is often identified as fascist, most scholars consider it as conservative and authoritarian, rather than truly fascist.Spain was isolated by the international community for nearly a decade after World War II. By the 1950s, the nature of his regime changed from being openly totalitarian and using severe repression to an authoritarian system with limited pluralism. During the Cold War, Franco was one of the world's foremost anti-Communist figures: his regime was assisted by the West, and it was asked to join NATO. After chronic economic depression in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Franco presided over the Spanish miracle, abandoning autarky and pursuing economic liberalization, delegating authority to liberal ministers.Franco died in 1975 at the age of 82. He restored the monarchy before his death, which made King Juan Carlos I his successor, who led the Spanish transition to democracy. After a referendum, a new constitution was adopted, which transformed Spain into a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy.

✵ 4. December 1892 – 20. November 1975
Francisco Franco photo
Francisco Franco: 14   quotes 4   likes

Famous Francisco Franco Quotes

“A totalitarian state will harmonize in Spain the operation of all the capabilities and energy in the country, that inside the National Unity, the work esteemed as the most unavoidable must be the only exponent of the people's will.”

Francisco Franco

Un estado totalitario armonizará en España el funcionamiento de todas las capacidades y energías del país, que dentro de la Unidad Nacional, el trabajo estimado como el más ineludible de los deberes será el único exponente de la voluntad popular.
Victory speech in Madrid (19 May 1939), quoted in Espana Nuevo Siglo‎ (1997) by Tim Connell and Juan Kattán-Ibarra, p. 174

“Let us be under no illusion. The Jewish spirit, which was responsible for the alliance of large-scale capital with Marxism and was the driving force behind so many anti-Spanish revolutionary agreements, will not be got rid of in a day.”

Francisco Franco

Victory speech in Madrid (19 May 1939)

“One thing that I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully, is that whatever the contingencies that may arise here, wherever I am there will be no communism.”

Francisco Franco

In discussion with Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, as quoted in Francisco Franco : The Times and the Man (1938) by Joaquin Arraras, p. 159

“We do not believe in government through the voting booth.”

Francisco Franco

Statement during the civil war, cited in 1938 by TIME Magazine, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915079,00.html, also cited in John A. Crittenden, Parties and elections in the United States, Prentice-Hall, 1982, (p.6).
Context: We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams.

“The whole secret of the campaigns unleashed against Spain can be explained in two words: Masonry and Communism… we have to extirpate these two evils from our land.”

Francisco Franco

Writing under the alias Jakin Boor in the journal Arriba in an article, "Masonry and Communism" (14 December 1946), as quoted in Franco: A Biography by Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurúạ, p. 71

“We strive to form a single national front against the Judeo-Masonic lodges, against Moscow and the Marxist societies.”

Francisco Franco

Statement in El defensor de Córdoba (24 July 1936), as cited by Javier Navarrete in Más Allá http://mcedhou1.housings.nexica.net/MAS_ALLA/html/version_texto.asp?IDArt=29

Francisco Franco Quotes

“Fascism, since that is the word that is used, fascism presents, wherever it manifests itself, characteristics which are varied to the extent that countries and national temperaments vary. It is essentially a defensive reaction of the organism, a manifestation of the desire to live, of the desire not to die, which at certain times seizes a whole people. So each people reacts in its own way, according to its conception of life. Our rising, here, has a Spanish meaning! What can it have in common with Hitlerism, which was, above all, a reaction against the state of things created by the defeat, and by the abdication and the despair that followed it?”

Francisco Franco
Life , People , Way , Time

“The defence of internal peace and order constitutes the sacred mission of a nation's armed forces and that is what we have carried out.”

Francisco Franco

As quoted in The Tyrants : 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption (2006) by Clive Foss, p. 143, ISBN 1905204965

Peace

“We have torn up Marxist materialism and we have disorientated Masonry. We have thwarted the Satanic machinations of the clandestine Masonic superstate. Despite its control of the world’s press and numerous international politicians. Spain’s struggle is a Crusade; as soldiers of God we carry with us the evangelism of the world!”

Francisco Franco

Speech to the women’s section of the Falange in Madrid (11 September 1945), as quoted in "Freemasonry and the Spanish Civil War" http://www.freemasonrytoday.com/30/p09.php by Matthew Scanlan.

God , World

“The Spanish Republic did not find itself free of obligations. For the most part the leaders were Freemasons. Before their duty to their country came their obligations to the Grand Orient. In my opinion, Freemasonry, with all its international influence, is the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain, as well as the murder of Calvo Sotelo, who was executed in accordance with orders from the Grand Secretary of Freemasonry in Geneva.”

Francisco Franco

Interview with Spanish journalist Nena Belmonte, as quoted in "Freemasonry and the Spanish Civil War" https://web.archive.org/web/20080513182157/http://www.freemasonrytoday.com/30/p09.php by Matthew Scanlan.

Parting , Country

“All is well, thank God… but victory will not be complete, definitive or stable, as long as Masonry is in our Spain. And how will it disappear? What to do? Ask Mussolini.”

Francisco Franco

Statement in El defensor de Córdoba (2 October 1936), as cited by Agustín Celis http://www.agustincelis.com/id64.htm

God , Victory

“Franci Interview with Henri Massis, 1938. Quoted in Massis's book Chefs, Paris, Plon 1939. Also quoted in Richard Griffiths, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism. London : Duckworth Publishing, 2000.”

Francisco Franco
Books , Quotes , Intelligence , Personality

“I say this to you because we Spaniards are a forgetful people, because we are used to living for the moment, because we do not look back, because we do not know how to see the chain of heroes, because we do not contemplate the sum of sacrifices.”

Francisco Franco

1940s, 1940, Laureate Cross acceptance speech (July 1940)

Forgetting , People

“We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams.”

Francisco Franco

Statement during the civil war, cited in 1938 by Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915079,00.html, also cited in John A. Crittenden, Parties and elections in the United States, Prentice-Hall, 1982, (p.6).
1930s, 1938

Box , Dreams

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