Young people who were not born when Francisco Franco died, after ruling Spain with an iron fist, in a regime marked by torture and the denial of freedoms, repeat “myths” and “expressions closely linked to the regime and Francoist propaganda”. A question of education.
50 years after the dictator’s death, more and more young Spaniards are seduced by the general’s figure Francisco Francooften without being aware of the severity of their regime (and without having experienced it personally), in most cases, influenced by propaganda spread on social media.
“Life was better under Franco” has become a mantra on social media, attracting a frustrated generation that has received little education about dictatorship and if it shows receptiveness to anti-system ideologies.
After overthrow a democratic republic in the civil war of 1936-39, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist until his death in 1975, he remembers the .
But Cristina Luz GarcíaHistory teacher at a school in Madrid, says she observed some of her students repeat “myths” and “expressions closely linked to the regime and Francoist propaganda”.
These students they do not have “in-depth knowledge of the person” nor the “negative consequences” of 36 years marked by torture and the denial of freedoms, García explained to AFP.
The pro-Franco narrative is, for young people, “a way of challenge teachers or from seem to have a different opinion… something that, in itself, is very attractive in adolescence,” he added.
A construction of reservoirs, guarantee of economic prosperity and creation of social security are some of the achievements, real or exaggeratedattributed to Franco, in an attempt to weave an alternative narrative about his fascism-backed regime.
According to an October survey by the Spanish polling institute CIS, more than 1/5 of Spaniards considered the dictatorship “good” or “very good”while 65.5% described it as “bad” or “very bad”.
A separate survey that same month carried out by the Socialists are no longer the most popular party among young people from 18 to 29 years old.
The main conservative opposition party, the People’s Partysurpassed them, while the party that increased its support the most of younger voters was Vox far right.
Both parties oppose the left-wing government’s measures to revisit Spain’s Franco past, including an official program of events this year marking the 50th anniversary of the dictator’s death.
“Educational deficit”
Young people “are incredibly frustrated” with precarious working conditions and inaccessible housing, he says Veronica Diazcoordinator of a master’s degree in social problems at the National University of Distance Education.
“They believe that traditional political parties not only do they not resolve your problems, but are part of them”, Díaz told AFP, explaining the attraction for far-right “anti-system” discourse.
“The deficit in historical education” in schools and the proliferation of “content creators who reinterpret history” lead young people without “sufficient critical tools” to “confusing these narratives with legitimate versions of History”, added Díaz.
In the southern city of Iznalloz, the history teacher José María García try fill these knowledge gaps. In 2020, it began developing activities aimed at teaching students “what Francoism really was”, highlighting its “method of repression”.
The project seeks to provide students with “material so that they can defend a different discourse from that which they find on social media”.
His students Hugo Guindos, 15, and Erika Hurtado, 16, say they notice that there are “more and more” praise for Franco among his colleagues. TikTok Influencers “speak without argumentsand people who also have no arguments and listen to them, believe in them,” Hurtado told AFP.
Both students were previously unaware of the repression in its own region“where there is a huge number of mass graves”, said Guindos, surprised by the frequent use of torture by the regime.
The professor believes that the project is important to raise awareness among the current generation about the past. “It wasn’t as good a period as they say”.
