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On November 20, 1975, Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro, in announcing to the people of Spain the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, read as follows from the Caudillo’s last will and testament: “I have wished to live and die a Catholic. I glory in the name of Christ and it has been my constant will to be a faithful son of the Church, in whose bosom I am about to die…. Spain, whom I love to the last moment of my life,… I beseech you to persevere in unity and in peace…Never forget that the enemies of Spain and of Christian civilization are on the alert…. Preserve the unity of the lands of Spain.”

Franco himself, from the earliest days of his regime during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, had declared himself a “totalitarian”—without, however, really meriting the term. His idea of “re-educating” his subjects was to put the Catholic Church in charge of Spain’s education and its standards of art, discourse, and decency; and, though during the Civil War atrocities were committed on both sides, for the next 36 years the regime’s “repressive” acts included most spectacularly the jailing and execution of Basque terrorists for their crimes of robbery, terror, and assassination. As your modern, up-to-date, progressive dictator, Franco was leagues behind Hitler and Mussolini, while the denizens of that bolgia in Hell in which the spirit of Stalin savagely broods and where a place is undoubtedly reserved for Pol Pot and Idi Amin would turn up their noses in contempt at him.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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On November 20, 1975, Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro, in announcing to the people of Spain the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, read as follows from the Caudillo’s last will and testament: “I have wished to live and die a Catholic. I glory in the name of Christ and it has been my constant will to be a faithful son of the Church, in whose bosom I am about to die…. Spain, whom I love to the last moment of my life,… I beseech you to persevere in unity and in peace…Never forget that the enemies of Spain and of Christian civilization are on the alert…. Preserve the unity of the lands of Spain.”

Franco himself, from the earliest days of his regime during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, had declared himself a “totalitarian”—without, however, really meriting the term. His idea of “re-educating” his subjects was to put the Catholic Church in charge of Spain’s education and its standards of art, discourse, and decency; and, though during the Civil War atrocities were committed on both sides, for the next 36 years the regime’s “repressive” acts included most spectacularly the jailing and execution of Basque terrorists for their crimes of robbery, terror, and assassination. As your modern, up-to-date, progressive dictator, Franco was leagues behind Hitler and Mussolini, while the denizens of that bolgia in Hell in which the spirit of Stalin savagely broods and where a place is undoubtedly reserved for Pol Pot and Idi Amin would turn up their noses in contempt at him.