When Franco died, as indicated by the title of the book that Miguel Ángel Aguilar has just published, there was no custom, although perhaps this will be corrected over time: we can announce every day that he is still seriously dead, as in Saturday night live. After the death of the dictator, the transition towards a democratic system occurred which made coexistence, prosperity and integration possible in Europe. It is logical that the new generations return to that historical moment. In some of these reviews, presumably driven by a desire to remember, the forgetfulness is striking.
Francoism was extraordinarily repressive, especially in its early days, when, in the words of Santos Juliá, it was “fascism under a canopy in a military uniform.” One of the reasons that explain its ferocity, wrote David Jiménez Torres, is that it was a regime emerging from a civil war. In The back fourCarmen Martín Gaite spoke of a sociological characteristic of the regime: the role assigned to women, with a suffocating and obligatory joy: “Proud of their heritage, we will fulfill our mission as Spaniards, we will learn to make the sign of the cross on the foreheads of our children, to air out a room, to take advantage of the cartons and cuts of meat, to remove stains, to weave scarves and to wash the curtains, to smile at our husband when he arrives upset, to tell him that both Isabel and Fernando are in trouble, that the domestic economy helps save the national economy and that garlic is very good for the bronchi”. Political oppression lasted until the end; Discrimination against women and moral conservatism were more marked than in other countries, but they were not the exclusive heritage of the regime: in Italy adultery was a crime until 1968 and divorce was legalized in 1970. 50 years have just passed since the Sex Discrimination Act, which established the right of women to open a bank account in the United Kingdom. It is also striking that there is talk of a pact of silence. It contrasts with the experience of many: on my college entrance exam in 1999, the history exam had a question about Franco and another about the Civil War. In democracy, books (history, fiction) about war have not stopped being published. There was a time when almost all the major Spanish authors wrote their novels about the war, and it became a cliché to say that Spanish cinema only made films about the civil war. Now we can read that these are rarely discussed or taboo topics. Sometimes there is no silence, but people who don’t listen.
