Could he have made Spain great again?

...

No telling, he died to early for us to find out. I don't even know if he had concrete plans for Spain beyond the breakup of unions and the nationalization of natural resources.

I'm willing to guess probably not, I think he would've been too chummy with Hitler and Mussolini which would've made him a target for the Allies, a fight he couldn't possibly win. At least with Franco, he had the presence of mind not to get involved too closely with the Axis because 1) there's no way he could effectively contribute to the world war after recovering from the civil war and 2) if things went south, he was going to get lumped in with them and lose everything he had fought for when a foreign power would come in an prop up a republican government again.

My best guess is that everything that happened with Spain came out for the best, but the way the world was spinning meant that it still wasn't enough.

Falangists were scum. Thank God Franco subdued them and used them only as cannon fodder.

Franco was a cuckservative

Franco saved Spain and gave it peace. Falangists would've just rammed everything to the ground if they were given the opportunity.

>Falangists would've just rammed everything
how?

By turning Spain into another failed fascist state like Italy and Germany.

So wait, are you saying Franco-Spain wasn't fascist, or that it was the only (moderately) successful fascist state?

Yes, de Rivera and Durreti were the only leaders of the civil war worth dying for, the rest were either Opus Dei or Freemason sleeper agent. The fact they were both conveniently disposed off before the whole thing really started (on the same day no less) tells you everything you need to know.

Franco was an opportunist who did what was best for Spain. He kept the country out of war without pissing off Hitler or Mussolini. After the war he successfuly established relations wirh the NATO and the US, making himself one of key factors in the Cold War games. He ensured the peace after his death by proclaiming monarchy, and by slowly introducing political pluralism during the 60s.

I usually have little respect for right-wing dictators but there is nothing i find unlikeable about Franco.

>I usually have little respect for right-wing dictators but there is nothing i find unlikeable about Franco.
Same, I'd still classify him as a fasist though.

Franco wasn't completely without faults though; he did execute and imprison a lot of his political enemies without giving them any route of compromise, no matter how difficult. He essentially forced his opposition's backs to a wall, which left him no choice but to line them up and have them shot since they had no other choice but to get in line or die.

That said, still the best overall for Spain, imo. The world needs more Francos.

>I'd still classify him as a fasist though.
He wasn't a Fascist. He was a conservative. In some ways a traditionalist.

I know it's more of a technical distinction, but Franco was much more of a traditionalist or conservative in practice, although a lot of what he did was just opportunist. Fascism is a little more than simply a reactionary dictatorship, something that reorganizes the state and economy in a specific way rather than something that just centralizes power.

I still think if leftist won the Spanish civil war the Iberian peninsula would end up balkanized like Yugoslavia.

There is no way Republicans would've ever won.

Iberian Balkanization is a whole other topic, and on both sides you had regions that wanted to assert atonomy. Navare for the Nationalists and Catalonia and Aragon for the Republicans were the big two specifically.

The rise of the communists backed by the USSR on the Republican side signaled the end of autonomy then, and Franco was dead set on centralizing the Spanish state and preserving unity. There was just no way for either minor faction to break off and have its voice heard without being the biggest contributor to the conflict (Catalonia could've done this by being the most distant from the fighting and serving as the biggest industrial base for the Republicans, but ultimately that would prove futile with foreign aid.).

Maybe if someone knows more about regional identities and politics during the civil war era though, they could shed some additional light onto how big autonomy movements were in Spain.

>established relations wirh the NATO and the US,
atlanticists/american whores are disgusting

Yup, that's the path Spain was going down during the II Republic. Catalonia even tried to unilaterally secede in 1934 few days after a right-wing coalition won the general election in Spain.

>Catalonia even tried to secede

Who doesn't try to secede these days when your favorite candidate loses?

if it was good enough for john c calhoun, then it's good enough for liberals I suppose

Opus Dei did nothing wrong. Btw they were pretty powerless until the 60's

Catalonian identity in the civil war was very divided since most catalán workers were CNT or UGT members and the Generalitat ended up betraying them, it should also be mentioned that during the republic Masia proclaimed the catalán state in a hypothetical federal republic. There were plans underway to give Aragon, Euskadi and Galicia more autonomy. Basque and Navarran nationalisms were until very recently right wing, you could argue that this may be caused due to the carlist history of those regions, thats why PNV didnt support the Republic in some parts of Euskadi while supporting it in others. Aragon was similar to catalonia, many reds, lots of Unión power and many collectivizations.

He was a counter enlightement reactionary, not a fascist.

Spain was never great.

Aren't they still pretty powerless in the grand scheme of things? They've got like 100k members at most, and most of those just live normal lives and do some charity work. I mean, barring any sinister conspiracies and analpain from people complaining they're hijacking modernism.

>Aren't they still pretty powerless in the grand scheme of things?
Not really.They have a huge presence in the parlament,pretty much a good chunk of the higher class is part of the mission and own the best schools and one of the best universities in the country.

History tells that both Franco and Salazar, their regimes were somehow para-fascists, not revolutionary-like in Italy. They were nationalists for sure. But inside their ranks, there were fascist organizations, like Falange in Spain and Legião Portuguesa in Portugal.

>para-fascist
What does that even mean? Salazar and Franco were pragmatic realist conservative traditionalist.

That means that their regimes had many common ground with the italian fascism, like corporativistm, their aesthetics, right-winged nationalism, etc but they were not that totalitarian, neither revolutionary. They started to become more conservative when the Axis lost the war, for obvious reasons.

> corporativistm, their aesthetics, right-winged nationalism,
That's a stretch because many government models have such things. Including post-war Japan.

>Falangists
>Not the Carlists

>Muh king
>Muh fueros

>meme reply

He did. You Antifa faglords hate on this guy, but in some alternate reality the iron curtain was brought to Iberia. And the nationalists would be idolized as what could have saved Spain.

it's a real shame he never became the leader of Spain

it would have been interesting

Nah, he was one of those fascists who were more socialist than nacionalist, like oswald mosley

Even though I'm slightly sympathetic to the plight of the republicans' side, pretty much every scenario I can think of comes out worse if the nationalists lost the war. Pretty much the least of all evils, imo.