Franco
Franco before his death. Moreover, although the military may have been broadly in favour of the monarchy, Girbau-León suggests that the preservation of order was more important to them. 14 Indeed, Franco defused the threat and dealt with monarchist elements of the army by notionally restoring the monarchy in 1947, and by suggesting that the monarchy could not survive ‘without the Falange’, and that if the army removed him, what he called ‘the days of fat living’ would not continue; moreover, monarchist generals who remained unsupportive of Franco, such as Aranda and Kindélan, did not retain their positions. 15 Later on in his rule, he appeased the military by handing out honours and promotions. 16 Although, in the 1970s, some younger officers organize d an ‘Unión Democrática Militar’, it was too small to pose any significant threat to Franco. 17 Therefore, it can be seen that monarchist groups had little influence and posed little threat to Franco; the army was on the whole sufficiently supportive of Franco to keep him in power; although technocratic elements of Franco’s support base held considerable influence against the wishes of the Caudillo, they did not threaten his position. By examining the role of the Catholic Church in Spain during this period, it emerges that Franco was for a large part of his tenure dependent on the legitimacy provided by the Church, but he used it skilfully in order to shore up his position and retain overall control; however, he lost some control to opposing elements of the Church, which became akin to other political opponents; nevertheless, his control was not very significantly weakened by clerical opposition, as the most overt opponents were severely punished. First, the Catholic Church had been used to gain some degree of popular support for the regime from the Civil War onwards, since the killing of about 7,000 priests in Republican zones in the first few months of the war, and the early association between the rebels and the Church, made the Falange able somewhat credibly to pose as protectors of Catholic tradition in that the war was declared to be a ‘holy crusade’, with this sentiment evidently continuing into a large amount of Franco’s time as Caudillo, and the C hurch contributing to Franco’s control over the Spanish people. 18 Furthermore, as well as providing legitimacy to Franco, the Church was an instrument of the state in cracking down on dissent, both within the clergy and generally: it suspended and ostracized clerics openly supportive of the Republic, and in the 1940s the clergy helped Franco to deal with general political opposition by reporting on the political history of individuals in their parishes since October 1934, in order to facilitate prosecutions under the Law of Political Responsibility, which was used against those associated with the Popular Front and those ‘who had opposed the triumph of the National Movement’, as described above. 19 In addition to this, the Church was used by Franco as a way of projecting a regal image, entering the church of Santa Barbara under a canopy in the manner of kings of Spain, using tradition to justify his control of Spain, including at the beginning of his rule in 1939. 20 The Church continued to add legitimacy to Fr anco’s rule for much of its duration: in 1953, a Concordat was agreed with the Catholic Church. Although one could argue that Franco lost control to the Church by the Condordat’s provisions, such as clerical influence in education and censorship, and freed om from state interference and taxes, and that the Concordat indicates that Franco was a supplicant reliant on the
14 Girbau-León 1962: 335-336, 339; Brief biography of Girbau-León: https://fpabloiglesias.es/entrada-db/girbau- leon-vicente/; consulted 26.07.2023. 15 Preston 2020: 371, 373, 411; Carr 1982: 699.
16 Judt 2010: 518. 17 Ibid.: 698-699. 18 Thomas 2016: 36. 19 Casanova 2010: 93-95; Thomas 2016: 38. 20 Beevor 2006: 401.
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