General Francisco Franco, western Europe’s last dictator, died 50 years ago, leading to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy

How did Franco die?
General Franco, who had ruled Spain since his military defeat of the Second Spanish Republic in 1939, made his last public appearance on 1 October 1975. Looking gaunt and ill, he warned of a “Masonic, Leftist and Communist conspiracy against Spain”. In early November, he was taken to La Paz Hospital in Madrid, where he died shortly after midnight on 20 November. Later that day a mournful PM, Carlos Arias Navarro, made a televised speech to the nation, which began: “Españoles, Franco ha muerto.” (“Spaniards, Franco has died.”) A national mourning period of 30 days was declared, and tens of thousands of people lined up to view Franco’s body lying in state in the Royal Palace. After his funeral, he was taken to be buried at the Valley of the Fallen, a colossal memorial near Madrid built in part by political prisoners; the cortège was greeted by 75,000 blue-shirted supporters of the fascist Falange, Spain’s sole legal political party.

Who took power after him?
Franco claimed to rule as “head of state of the Kingdom of Spain”. But actually, he disdained the exiled heir apparent of the royal House of Bourbon, Don Juan, Count of Barcelona, whom he regarded as a dangerous liberal. Instead, Franco exercised near-absolute personal power as “Caudillo”, or military dictator. He merged his far-right Falange political party with the Carlists, right-wing monarchists, to form a National Movement, Spain’s only political institution. During his 36-year rule, he exercised dominance via the military and the Catholic Church; and closely controlled the media. In 1969, though, Franco confirmed that the monarchy would be restored upon his death, and named Juan’s son, Juan Carlos, as his heir apparent. For six years, he groomed Infante Juan Carlos as his successor; and in November 1975, two days after Franco’s death, King Juan Carlos I ascended the throne.

How did the transition to democracy come about?
Juan Carlos swore to uphold the laws of the Francoist state; and repression continued in the early days of his rule. But he also promised a “monarchy of all Spaniards”, where Franco’s rhetoric had insistently divided the nation between the civil war’s “victors” and “vanquished”. Spain had changed greatly during Franco’s rule: the poverty-stricken economic autarky of the decades after the civil war ended with liberalisation in 1959, and the ensuing “Spanish economic miracle”; an educated middle class and a richer industrial worker class had emerged; and the growth of mass tourism had opened Spain up to the world. In the first months of Juan Carlos’ rule there was a clamour for change, with widespread strikes and protests.

How did Juan Carlos react? 
In 1976, he appointed Adolfo Suárez to replace the hardline Arias Navarro as PM. Suárez, who had Francoist ties but reformist aims, is often seen as the hero of la Transición: he swiftly dismantled vast tracts of the Francoist state and liberalised the political system. The Political Reform Law of 1976 legalised other political parties and established an elected parliament. Censorship was later eased and religious freedom was granted for the first time. In June 1977, Spain held its first elections in 41 years; 18 months later, a new constitution retaining the monarchy was approved in a referendum, bringing the Franco era to a formal end. So as to ensure a peaceable transition, though, Suárez forged what is called “the Pact of Forgetting”. The Amnesty Law of 1977 granted amnesty for regime-era crimes, which meant there was no justice over Francoist abuses.

Was the transition smooth?
No. By the early 1980s, the upbeat mood that had followed liberalisation had given way to Basque separatist violence, soaring unemployment and discontent with Suárez’s civilian government. On 23 February 1981, some 200 civil guards stormed the Cortes, the Spanish parliament. They fired machine guns, and ordered legislators on to the floor. Parliamentarians, staff and journalists dived for cover. Fear spread across Spain. In response, King Juan Carlos ignored trusted advisers who supported the coup attempt and presented it as a fait accompli, and made addresses on the radio and on television in which he condemned it, and vowed to punish those responsible. By the following morning, order had been restored. The final vestiges of fascism in Spain had been defeated, and Juan Carlos had secured his own reputation as a defender of democracy.

Did Juan Carlos remain well-liked?
For years, he was one of the world’s most popular monarchs. Under his constitutional monarchy, Spain joined Nato in 1982 and the EEC in 1986, and is now among the world’s most liberal nations. Yet public opinion shifted during the course of Juan Carlos’ rule as a new generation demanded higher ethical standards from their king, who had a reputation for scandal and philandering. His libido was once described as a “state problem” by the Spanish Secret Service; according to one biographer, he has slept with 5,000 women. In 2012, while Spain was suffering an economic crisis, he had an accident while hunting elephants in Botswana with his ex-mistress, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. There was an outcry, and €65 million worth of gifts he had reportedly given her became a key focus of investigations into his finances: he was accused of taking bribes for facilitating a Spanish high-speed rail contract in Saudi Arabia.

What’s the situation today?
Following that scandal, in 2014 Juan Carlos abdicated in favour of his son, Felipe, after 39 years on the throne. Felipe has sought to slim down and modernise the monarchy; Juan Carlos now lives in exile, on a private island in Abu Dhabi. He remains an ambiguous figure, praised for his role in la Transición, but tainted. Like many in Spain, he feels some residual affection for Franco, whom he described in a recent memoir as like “a father” to him.

Generalissimo: a career in violence
Francisco Franco Bahamonde was born to a military family in Ferrol, Galicia in 1892. He entered the army at a young age, and gained rapid promotion as a colonial officer in Morocco, fighting the vicious Rif War to put down a tribal rebellion. In 1936, he joined the army coup against the Second Spanish Republic, and from July brought the Army of Africa over from Morocco to Seville in the first major military airlift, using planes lent by Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. In October, he was declared Generalissimo and Jefe del Estado of the Nationalist side. His forces, the most effective in Spain, backed by Germany and Italy, fought their way across Spain, “cleansing” Republicans kilometre by kilometre, using tactics developed in Morocco: torture, rape, summary executions. The White Terror, as it is known, continued after the Nationalist victory (Madrid fell in March 1939). Perhaps 150,000 Republicans, suspected dissidents and other “enemies” were executed, and around 750,000 were interned in concentration camps; Franco killed more of his own people than Mussolini. That he still has admirers in Spain is explained in part by the Red Terror, in which tens of thousands were executed by extreme elements on the Republican side.