A People Betrayed by Paul Preston

Author:Paul Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-12-29T04:57:58+00:00

The heir to the Spanish throne, Don Juan de Borbón, in 1963 with his son Juan Carlos, the future King of Spain. (Express/Getty)

14

The Franco Regime: Corruption and Complacency, 1953–1969

In the wake of the treaties with Washington and the Vatican, Franco’s confidence could be seen in his greater devotion to his hobbies – hunting, freshwater and deep-sea fishing with Max Borrell, golf, watching westerns in the private cinema in El Pardo, painting, and developing his large estate at Valdefuentes. Able to draw on the manpower and machinery of the Ministry of Agriculture, and producing wheat, potatoes and even tobacco, it became immensely profitable. When he was in residence at El Pardo, Franco would go to Valdefuentes most afternoons to take the air after a late lunch.1 He had always left his ministers to get on with the technical side of their ministries, to enrich themselves or merely to be efficient or even incompetent, while he dictated the broad lines of policy, especially foreign policy. After 1953, he increasingly left the drudgery of day-to-day government to others. He continued to ignore corruption, whether committed by his political servants or by his extended family, as long as absolute loyalty was maintained.

1954 saw the completion of the crypt at the Valle de los Caídos. It had been an obsession, ‘the other woman’, ever since the inauguration of the works in 1940. More than any other legacy of his regime, it mirrored Franco’s conception of himself as an historic figure on a par with Philip II. He had had it doubled in size from the original conception and the crypt was finished on 31 August. It had been a colossal undertaking, dug out from solid granite, 262 metres long and 41 high. Many of the great building companies of the Francoist boom got their start there: Banús, Agromán and, particularly, Huarte, awarded the contract to build the cross, which was not finished until September 1956. Weighing 181,620 metric tons, the cross was 150 metres high, with arms 46 metres long.2

The biggest problem facing Franco was the muted opposition of the monarchists who, to his discomfort, reminded him of his unfulfilled promise to restore the monarchy. In July 1954, under the influence of Gil Robles, Don Juan clashed with Franco over the education of Juan Carlos. Don Juan wanted his son to begin his university education at Louvain whereas Franco intended him to spend time in the Military Academy at Zaragoza followed by time at the naval and air academies and the social science and engineering faculties of Madrid University, and then to shadow Franco himself in government. Franco informed Don Juan that those who hoped to govern Spain should be educated in Spain, dismissively implying that Don Juan did not figure in his plans for any restoration and threatening that the monarchy might not be restored at all. Franco used the word ‘installation’ to emphasize that there would be no restoration of the legitimate Borbón line, only the imposition of a Francoist king who had to be chosen and trained to ensure the continuation of his regime.

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