Pedro Sánchez says his country must defend the democratic freedom ‘wrenched from us for so many years’
Spain has marked the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death with an absence of official events but a call from the prime minister to heed the lessons of the dictatorship and defend the democratic freedom “wrenched from us for so many years”.
Franco, whose military coup against the elected republican government in 1936 triggered a civil war and brought about four decades of dictatorship, died in Madrid on 20 November 1975.
Although the socialist government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has organised a year-long series of events to mark the post-Franco transformation, it ruled out any state acts on Thursday, the actual anniversary of the dictator’s death, to avoid accusations that it was seeking to celebrate his death.
The anniversary comes amid increasing concerns about the lack of knowledge about the dictatorship, especially among younger Spaniards. A poll last month revealed that more than 21% of those surveyed felt the Franco era was “good” or “very good”, while a poll on Thursday for El País found almost a quarter of Spaniards aged 18 to 28 felt that an authoritarian regime could sometimes be preferable to a democratic one.
