Chapter 17: Complacent Dictator
"With the hardening of the Cold War, Franco seemed to be gaining respectability. The pope was a hardline anti-Communist who had declared members of the party excommunicate, and in September 1950 the French government forced the Spanish Communist Party out of France because of its subversive international role, requiring it to shift headquarters to Prague. Franco was now being actively courted by the American military, transforming the West’s oldest and most successful anti-Communist from “fascist beast” into “sentinel of the Occident,” the title of his next semiofficial biography. "
"Franco once indicated that he did not find the government of Spain a particularly heavy burden, and given the way in which he ran it that was doubtless the case. In an interview with an American history professor he declared that his role had been analogous to that of the sheriff in the typical American western, a cinematic genre that he enjoyed. Franco went on to observe with considerable mirth that the Spanish, rather than being rebellious and difficult as they were often portrayed, were generally patient and long-suffering. “The proof of that,” he said breaking into a sudden loud cackle, “is that they have put up with [soportado] my regime for so long!”*"
"Cabinet ministers and principal subordinates were almost always given great latitude in running their departments, always of course within the general guidelines of the regime. Thus Lequerica would opine that being a cabinet minister “is the only serious thing you can be in Spain. To be a minister of Franco is to be a little king [reyezuelo] who does whatever he wants without having His Excellency put a halt to his personalistic policy.’ "
"The relative autonomy given ministers was accompanied by an almost total blind eye to malfeasance in office and corruption. From 1940 on it was commonly complained that Franco simply refused to listen to any charges of personal corruption, to the frustration of such close associates as Martinez Fuset and Munoz Grandes. He followed his standard tack of changing the conversation, which he normally did whenever it strayed to a serious theme that he found troublesome. Occasionally, as Muñoz Grandes complained, he would reply to a critic who denounced the malfeasance within a given ministers domain, “T’ll let him [the minister in question] know you have informed me of this.”* Franco seems to have regarded corruption as a necessary lubrication for the system that had the advantage of compromising many with the regime and binding them to it."
"Cabinet meetings became legendary for their marathon length and spartan style. During the 1940s Franco often dominated conversation, speaking at great length, launching into harangues, or wandering from subject to subject. As he grew older he became increasingly reticent and eventually went to the opposite extreme, speaking relatively little. In later decades cabinet meetings were held every Friday during the greater part of the year, though after 1956 they sometimes met biweekly. dq"
"On busy occasions, lunch might be taken on the premises and restricted to one hour. The lengthy sessions were often a trial for the ministers, since Franco did not believe in rest breaks and did not permit smoking in his presence. Even water was sometimes absent from the table. His own bladder control was legendary, and he is not known to have left a cabinet meeting to step out to the toilet until December 6, 1968,'* after his seventy-sixth birthday. Ministers had to catch his eye to be excused or to step out for a smoke. Only in his last years did cabinet meetings grow shorter, sometimes being limited to a single morning session.
Francos interest in and knowledge of government was quite uneven. In later years
his attention at cabinet meetings varied considerably. Problems of ordinary administration did not interest him at all and in general he took little part in the discussions, which could sometimes be quite lively. Nonetheless, some matters visibly awakened his interest and he followed them with attention. Among these were foreign policy, relations with the Church, public order, and problems having to do with the communications media and with labor. '*
When disagreement arose at cabinet meetings
he rarely took positions pro or con. When he thought the matter had been sufficiently discussed, and there were not fundamental objections, he terminated the discussion and the proposal was accepted with appropriate modifications. On the other hand, when no agreement emerged, instead of imposing a solution he directed the ministers involved to study the matter further and seek a common solution to present at the next meeting."
"Franco was quite serious about not considering himself a dictator (as for-that matter was Hitler). He claimed to derive great satisfaction from the fact that he did not personally interfere in the regular judicial system,'® and insisted at least for the record that there should always be free discussion in the Cortes. He was undoubtedly sincere in his conviction that the regime was working for the true progress and economic development of the country, and in private was quite critical—as was common among the military —of the financial elite. "
"Anonymous personal threats arrived regularly in the mail down to the final days of his life. Franco rarely saw these personally, and there is no indication that they bothered him very much. His anarchist opposition showed the main interest in organizing assassination attempts, which were most frequent between 1945 and 1950. Particularly elaborate prepa- rations were set in motion on the occasion of his visit to Barcelona in 1947 and to San Sebastián in September 1948. Though Spanish security some- times seemed a trifle lax compared with rigorously totalitarian regimes, it was tight enough to foil each of the forty or more assassination plans developed by anarchists down to 1964, when the attempts petered out. Not a single one ever reached the point of direct action.”
Francos personal tours to various parts of Spain continued at a diminishing rate through the 1960s, and the crowds rarely failed to present themselves, whether spontaneously or not. On these and other occasions he continued to deliver his regular ceremonial speeches, in addition to two or three major addresses each year. Speechwriters who could turn out elegant speeches seem to have been in very short supply at El Pardo, and Franco wrote most of his material himself. Much of his terminology was rather simple, but it was adequate to get across his main concepts. Grandiosity was not his forte, and he seems to have been the one who established in Spanish rhetoric the custom of saying “Many thanks” at the end of a speech. Before his time the style normally was to end with the peremptory and slightly arrogant “He dicho” (“I have spoken”) or “He terminado” ("I have finished”)."
"The attitude of Don Nicolás toward Franco never improved. Even after the Civil War he called his son Paco “inept” and insisted that the idea of him as a “great leader,” as repeated daily in the controlled press, “was something to laugh about.” Don Nicolás was pro-Jewish and detested Hitler, whom he thought would either destroy or enslave Europe. He found his sons anti-Mason mania absurd. “What does he know about Masonry? It is an association of illustrious and honorable men, needless to say greatly superior to him in learning and in openness of spirit.” Upon his fathers death Franco quickly took possession of the corpse, but accorded it only the normal funeral honors of a vice-admiral of the Spanish Navy and barred the distraught Augustina from the ceremony.* There is no indication that he ever acknowledged his half-sister"
"Doña Carmen also played a more active role in public affairs and tended to be more controlling in the arrangement of Francos personal schedule as he grew older. She accompanied him on most hunting trips and became increasingly vocal about political matters, especially in her resentment of aristocratic monarchism. It vexed her greatly and she apparently urged that the monarchy and its supporters be more closely restricted and receive as little official recognition as possible. Her control of Francos social life tended to increase his isolation, for she attempted to screen him from any who might raise unpleasant questions, and she instructed guests not to discuss potentially disagreeable topics. Despite Francos famed steadiness of nerve and serenity of mind, troublesome problems were perfectly capable of worrying him and disturbing his sleep. Similarly, though Franco had never given the slightest indication that he had a roving eye, Dona Carmen kept pretty and younger women away from his social receptions, simply to be on the safe side.
Thus Franco entered the final quarter-century of his life with a fixed routine that varied little until his death. His vacations were long, and he was shielded from conflict as much as possible, in some respects more and more out of touch with his country and the world as it changed. Personal isolation increased as he grew older. As his health declined in his final years he saw fewer and fewer people, so that toward the end he was very solitary. Yet after the 1940s his personal authority was never again seriously questioned within Spain. Even the opposition eventually came to think of the possibility of an alternative only after his death. He had built his regime slowly and indecisively, but the foundations laid were firm enough to endure. The regime rode a tide of ever-increasing national prosperity until death finally claimed him in his eighty-third year"