So I've seen a few threads on here mention that Franco was the best possible outcome for Spain and should be regarded...

You know the Spanish economy didn't grow until the mid 50's when the US began pumping dosh in?

Same for the economies of the rest of Western Europe.

Not anti-hero but a proper hero.

>rape is worse than murder

Just call it a small reperation for Moorish hardship.

Yeah but Spain wasnt devasted by WWII, keeping on par with your destroyed neighbors isnt exactly an achievement

Indeed

They just got out of an equally brutal war years before

I didn't know Franco was so tolerant of Moroccan customs.

>rape and murder nuns and priests

>complain when Franco lets his Moroccan buddies have their way with your whore female fighters

the Communist cries out even as he strikes you.

He was the good guy in a same way as USSR was during ww2. He was the lesser evil in that fight, but still an evil.

Spain was pretty much used as the testing ground for WW2. Germany and Italy pumped volenteers and armaments to the nationalists, Russia completely undermined the anarchists to bring the communists to power and fed them resources as well. It was only when the molotov-ribbentrop pact was established did Russia begin to rescind aid to the communists, in part because they were failing despite the aid and in part not to anger Germany and provoke a war.

The fact of the matter is Spain was in an incredibly poor place, probably one of the most backwards nations on the European continent at the time, and under Franco, managed to pull themselves up almost to par with others and doing it despite their only "allies" having been beaten down and destroyed.

Spaniard here. I'd say you'd have a hard time finding info that doesn't have considerable bias. First hand accounts of the war are filled with a plethora of sectarian sentiment. Even "neutral" countries like the US had their sympathies, so it's pretty hard to split truth from propaganda. What I think both sides should agree to is that the Republican side did have a lot going against the Catholic Church, and the Nationalists had Guernica. The way I see it, each side had their own weapons with which to commit attrocities. The Nationalists had modern technology with which to kill on a more mechanized level, as well as the organizational structure to kill efficiently, the Republicans had ideological width and the mob that came with it. The war had to finish sooner or later, the problem was that the more it progressed, the less likely it became that the Republic as it had been would have been restored. With Stalin being the only one providing non-voluntary aid, there was a marked Soviet shift in the Republican side. If the Republicans would have won, I doubt that the USSR would have hesitated in "convincing" them to adopt their form of government. In the end it was Communism against Fascism, and fascism just happened to win.

Was Franco really all that Fascist though? Not that there's a great definition of the ideology, but it seems like Spain under his rule differed a lot from Italy and Germany at the time. Sure, dissidents were rounded up and tossed into camps, but that's hardly unique to fascism itself.

Yeah, he's kind of a special case. The Tito of fascism if you will. He kind of did his own thing, especially in the latter years that were geared a bit more towards conservatism with an iron fist, rather than full-on ideological fascism.

>USSR didn't have technology

The best outcome for Spain was José María Gil-Robles winning the February 1936 elections which would have avoided the Spanish Civil War altogether.

But from a post-February 1936 vantage point, Franco winning the civil war was indeed the best outcome. The Leftist Republicans winning would have resulted in a communist takeover of Spain, complete with Stalinist purges and massive poverty enduring until today, whereas Franco at least was smart enough to reverse course on his autarky policies and embrace economic reforms and trade with the rest of Europe, pulling Spain up to Western European levels of development.

Another terrible consecuence of the Left winning the Spanish Civil War, is that come 1941, Republican Spain may find itself invaded by Hitler, or if it manages to stay neutral, it may have served as a staging ground for a Soviet "liberation" of France. Nightmare scenario either way.

>The Leftist Republicans winning would have resulted in a communist takeover of Spain, complete with Stalinist purges and massive poverty enduring until today,

Do you have anything backing this up or are you just pulling it out of your ass because the republicans had communists on their side?

I mean I get that it's a hypothetical future, but just assuming that the republicans would go full stalinist seems absurd, considering the huge diversity in the ideologies on their side

The Republican leadership grew increasingly pro-Soviet as the war progressed and they came to rely more and more on support and shipments from the Soviet Union.

Juan Negrín, the last Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic, belonged to the PSOE, but had extensive links to the Spanish Communist Party, which was hardline Stalinist. He used the support of the Communist Party to crush the anarchist movement, and came to rely increasingly on them. He also took the controversial decision to transfer the Spanish gold reserves to the Soviet Union in return for arms to continue the war (October 1936).

The thing is, there was large anarchist support on the republican side, particularly in Catalonia, and a large republican support base throughout the territory controlled, but once USSR aid entered the picture, both sides started to dwindle in the face of massive support by Russia, and the republicans were looking a whole lot more red. It's very possible that with continued support and subversion (assuming the republicans were on the path to victory as well), Spain would pretty much fall to communism and be brought into the Soviet sphere of influence, making the assumptions by the other poster correct.