Sam Jones - Historians rubbish Spanish supreme court's position on Franco's reign
Leading historians
have rubbished the Spanish supreme court’s claim that General Franco was head
of state from October 1936, almost three years before his rebellion secured
victory in the Spanish civil war. The claim was made in
the court’s latest ruling on the socialist
government’s tortuous efforts to exhume the dictator’s
remains from his hulking mausoleum and have him reburied in the family
vault. In the course of
explaining why it had decided to suspend next week’s planned exhumation to give
Franco’s family more time to appeal against the decision, the court referred to
him as “head of state from 1 October 1936 until his death in November 1975”. The assertion was met
with derision by experts on the period. The British Hispanist Paul Preston, who
wrote a biography of Franco, described it as “bollocks”.
He said: “The only way
these people at the supreme court could think this is right, that Franco was
head of state from that time, would be if they thought that the military coup
of 1936 was totally legitimate.” Preston pointed out
that the rebel generals had met in late September 1936 to agree on who should
be their overall military commander, or generalísimo.
“There’s a coup and
within that coup a certain kind of competition between generals – a bit like
the succession to Theresa May – to see who gets to be top dog,” he said. A week later, they
reluctantly agreed a decree to confirm Franco as head of the Spanish state’s
government for the duration of the war, working on the assumption that the
monarchy would eventually be restored. Franco’s claim to be
head of state had no legal basis, Preston said... read more:
