Franco joined the army only because Spain's navy stopped recruiting
Francisco Franco came from six generations of naval officers and expected to follow them. But after losing much of its fleet in the Spanish-American War, Spain's naval academy took no new students from 1906 to 1913. So at fourteen, short and bullied, he enrolled in the infantry instead, and graduated 251st of 312 cadets.
Born in Ferrol, Galicia, in 1892, Franco grew up resenting a father who abandoned the family, and later wrote a novel under a pseudonym that one historian reads as a portrait of the father he wished he had. His unremarkable class ranking proved misleading. In Morocco's colonial wars, where officers were said to win either a coffin or a general's sash, he gained a reputation for effectiveness. Shot in the abdomen in 1916, he became the army's youngest major the next year, later commanded the Spanish Foreign Legion, and in 1926, at 33, reached brigadier general, reportedly the youngest in Europe.
A monarchist, he disliked the Second Republic proclaimed in 1931 but kept serving it, leading the suppression of the 1934 Asturias uprising. After the leftist Popular Front won in 1936, he was sidelined to the Canary Islands. He joined that July's military coup, whose failure to take the whole country ignited the Spanish Civil War. With much of the rebel leadership dead, he became the Nationalists' sole leader, backed by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and won in 1939.
Victory brought severe repression. Forced labour, camps and executions after the war killed at least 30,000 people by conservative counts, with some estimates above 200,000. Spain stayed formally neutral in the Second World War while leaning toward the Axis, damaging its standing, but the Cold War turned Franco into a Western anti-communist ally, especially of the United States. Technocratic, market-oriented policies drove rapid growth known as the Spanish miracle, and the regime eased from totalitarian to authoritarian.
Parkinson's disease weakened him through the 1960s, and he gave up the post of prime minister in 1973 while remaining head of state. He died in 1975 at 82, having restored the monarchy; his successor, King Juan Carlos, then steered Spain toward democracy. Historians still debate whether his regime was truly fascist or better described as a military dictatorship.
Source: Francisco Franco
