Francisco Franco

Biography

Francisco Franco was born in 1892 in Ferrol, Galicia, into a family of naval officers. With the naval academy closed to new entrants, he entered the Infantry Academy at Toledo in 1907 and was commissioned in 1910. He made his career in the colonial war in Morocco, serving with native regulares and then the new Spanish Legion, which he commanded from 1923. He was badly wounded in 1916, led the first wave ashore at Alhucemas in 1925 and became a brigadier general in 1926, said to be the youngest in Europe.

In 1928 he was made director of the new General Military Academy in Zaragoza, which the Second Republic closed in 1931. After the centre-right won the 1933 election he directed the suppression of the 1934 miners' uprising in Asturias and in 1935 became Chief of the General Staff, but after the Popular Front's victory in 1936 he was sent to command the Canary Islands.

Franco joined the military coup of July 1936 and led the Army of Africa in the civil war that followed. The rebels soon named him generalissimo and head of state, and in 1937 he merged the Nationalist parties into FET y de las JONS under his leadership. After victory in 1939 his regime imprisoned, executed and used forced labour against tens of thousands of opponents. He kept Spain out of the Second World War while favouring the Axis, meeting Hitler at Hendaye in 1940.

In the Cold War, Franco gained Western support through the 1953 Pact of Madrid with the United States, and from the late 1950s his technocratic ministers presided over rapid economic growth. He gave up the premiership in 1973 because of age and illness but remained head of state until his death in Madrid in November 1975, having prepared the restoration of the monarchy under Juan Carlos.