WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, Monde Libertaire - 50 years ago ... (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On December 20, 1975, Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain, died in his

bed after 36 years of a fierce dictatorship. ---- The record of this
totalitarian regime deserves some reminders. After the coup d'état of
1936, Franco and a few generals launched a civil war against the Spanish
Republic and its Frente Popular government, a war that would generate 1
million deaths and 500,000 exiles. The repression that followed was on a
par with the barbarity of the victors: tens of thousands shot, the
imprisonment of 200,000 Republicans in more than 100 concentration
camps. Not to mention an active collaboration with Italian fascism and
German Nazism to the point of supporting that 7,200 exiles of all
tendencies be deported to Mauthausen, of which only 2,000 would return.

The Cold War and the cowardice of the Allied governments will allow the
maintenance of this criminal regime which, until the last minute, will
execute its opponents in particular Salvador Puch Antich and his
companion (1974), as well as Basque nationalists (1975). A few days
after the death of the Caudillo, Joan Carlos I is enthroned by the
Francoist Cortes as King of Spain, the latter swearing loyalty to the
principles of the Movimiento, that is to say the Falange.

The post-Franco period

The post-Franco period was a series of renunciations by the political
parties in exile. Following the so-called free elections of 1977, the
president of the government Adolfo Suarez, former secretary general of
the Movimiento, has an amnesty law passed. This erases Francoist crimes
and the so-called exactions of the Republicans. The Moncloa Pact of 1978
and the referendum on the Spanish constitution of the same year,
legalizing the Bourbon throne, completed the renunciation of the exile
organizations, except the CNT and the ERC (Catalanist party).

At no time did the Spanish monarchy express regret or apology for its
complicity with its godfather Franco, as if the dictatorship were just a
blank page in the country's history. It was not until 2019 that the
socialist government of Sanchez decided to exhume the dictator as well
as José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, from this
shameful monument in the Valley of the Fallen, an outrage to the
defenders of the Frente Popular.

An anarchist movement still present

As for the resurgent anarchist movement, after the International
Libertarian Days of 1977 which brought together 600,000 demonstrators in
Montjuich (Barcelona) under the cheers of Frédérica Montseny, it was
very quickly attacked by the government.

The new regime, worried by this return, organized a provocation at the
Scala Theater (Barcelona) the following year following a demonstration
against the Moncloa Pact, blaming the CNT for this fire.

This accusation created confusion in the movement and the country. The
CNT congress in Madrid in 1979 led to a split between the leadership and
a possibilist sector.

This will give birth to a maintained CNT (50,000 members), a CGT
(100,000 members) and in 1990 to the SOC (10,000 members).

Despite everything, the Spanish anarchist movement remains present and
lively. It is still a solid reference for international anarchism.
Although scattered, Spanish anarchism is nonetheless an influential
current in the country, especially in Catalonia.

Raoul
Groupe Commune de Paris

https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8207
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