What the USA can learn from Spain.
40 years of dictatorship should serve as an example.
Like most people, I am also horrified by the Capitol events. It is an embarrassing, disgraceful way of using people for the own purpose of one single person.
Most politicians do this all the time, but when this purpose is to completely break the system with violence, using people as pawns in a sinister game, we need to understand that we are now in a completely different scenario.
Most people tend to forget that we had (and still have one) genocide dictators for years here in Europe. But the point is that Franco, the Spanish dictator, won his war.
This fact led him to have Spain under 40 years of dictatorship. I want to underline this, once again. Yes, 40 years of dictatorship. Hitler is one of the evilest persons in human history. He killed himself after a downfall thanks to coordinated global action, working together against Nazis.
Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.
Benito Mussolini.
Mussolini was killed on April 28th of 1945 by a partisan communist commando. Some say that it was a black operation from British special forces. We will never know, but what we do know is that one dictator, fascist, and genocide of this dark triad prevailed. Franco.
In 1949 the NATO was created under the idea of never again allow to happen a situation as the world lived with the Nazi regime. It was a big step forward, in a way. Meanwhile, when the world was deeply breathing after WWII, Spain was ruled by a dictator, a genocide, a fascist.
No one came to fight against him during the civil war. No one came to liberate the Spanish people. After he proclaimed victory over the “reds” or socialist and republican people, he started what dictators love to do.
I am Catalan from Barcelona, living in Germany. I was born after Franco´s regime in 1979. In the '80s, Spain was a country that wanted to open its windows to the world. Like a little child that didn´t see what is out there for the last 4 decades.
As you can imagine, education about international matters was not a priority in Spain. English was something for families with enough resources. My generation is one of the first able to study abroad or at least outside. I am just one generation away from Franco. The dictator passed away in 1975 of natural causes. When the USA was celebrating the first man on the moon, Spain was still under a fascist dictatorial regime.
Isolation of their society from the rest of the world is a common tread of fascists. Like psychological abusers, they try to isolate their victims by building a parallel reality where they are the sun, the king, and the center. Like any megalomaniac personality, they try to make victims completely dependent on them so they can prolong their sick realm forever.
Don´t get me wrong. I love my country, all of it. Despite my political ideas or if I would like to see Spain as a federal republic, I love our diversity, and I hope that our story as a failed democracy can teach the world not to make the same mistakes de did.
Probably, one of the most known slogans from Spanish fascism is this one. España. Una, grande y libre. (Spain. One, great and free.) Does it sound familiar to you? Make America great again is more than just a marketing slogan. It borrows a dangerous legacy covered with blood.
Like all fascist leaders, they care about their concept of nation, they want it to be great, and of course, they want it to be free. Like a virus, they invade the real nation, the real country, made by differences, diversity, and by a cultural microcosmos for themselves and their unique idea of a nation.
Spain was not in Spain anymore. It became Francoland. Germany was not Germany anymore; it became Hitlerland. Italy became Mussoliniland. The same situation repeatedly happened in Asia, Africa, South America, The Soviet Union…
Wasn´t the intention of Trump to transform the USA into a Trumpland? Of course, it is. He played the fascists dictatorial manual literally chapter by chapter till the last one—physical violence.
Remember, Spain was kidnapped for forty years. Now, tell me that Trump would never try to be the one and only leader of the USA for the rest of his life and then give his family power to perpetuate them on his chair.
Like Franco in Spain. Fascists rarely achieve their objectives alone. They need a complicated, deep-rooted, and fanatic machinery to keep their toxicity spreading around. Hitler was the arrowhead of Nazism, but he would never have had any power without help and connivance. The same works for every single one of the authoritarian self-proclaimed leaders in the world.
After the fascist genocide Spanish dictator passed away in 1975, his machinery “understood” that the world was different and that Spain was located inside something called Europe. A place with real freedom. So they decided to invent one of the most shameful processes of Spain's entire history since the Roman Empire. They named it “La transición” (The Transition). The transition to what? You might ask—the transition to democracy.
But, how is it possible to have a clean and clear democracy after 40 years of infection? 40 years of deep-rooted to the bone fascism? Remember, Franco won the war in Spain.
So he took 4 decades to change justice, education, even sports. Of course, he tried to smash the country's other 3 official languages (Vasc or Euskera, Galician, and Catalan). He re-installed the catholic church in the right-center of society (like in the middle age).
He promoted a militarized police force (Guardia civil) to control the population and smash potential insurrections, and everything you can imagine to build Francoland for the next 1000years.
Spain was the North Korea of Europe.
Isn´t it the wet dream of any dictator? Their own bubble, isolated from the rest of the world. Adored by brainwashed, idiotic, and easy to control people?
The result of the “transition” was a corrupt monarchy that nobody voted for, one of the most, if not the most politicized legal system in Europe, Generations with poor education, a hyper-Catholic state where the church never gives any explanation in taxes or scandals.
A weak economy based on services, tourism, and construction. A practically inexistent public investment in innovation and a constant escape of talent for a better-paid job.
But the worse thing, the most dangerous one, is the people who still believe that life was better under genocide and fascist dictator. Today, many of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Spain have a relationship with the dictator.
Still not surreal enough for you? Let me use the silver bullet. Can you imagine a monument to Hitler? A place where tourists could visit today and spend the day taking pictures, selfies, and buying Postcards and t-shirts?
Grotesque, isn´t it?
Well, then you should visit “El Valle de Los Caídos” (The Valley of the Fallen) in Spain. It is a monument build to honor Franco and his high-rank soldiers, according to their plot, fallen in combat while defending his great nation´s freedom.
The Nazi Herman Göring is reported to have said, “Der Sieger wird immer der Richter und der Besiegte stets der Angeklagte sein,” which translates “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.”
The right political parties in Spain come directly from Franco supporters, everybody knows it, but nobody is moving a finger to illegalize them. Why? Because they created what Spain calls today “democracy.” They feel it is their right to have power, influence, and money, so they behave like this by the grace of God.
My point is that after 40 years, it is completely normalized. Fascism is installed in Spanish institutions, religion, the army, politics, and a high society percentage with Stockholm syndrome.
It took away 40 years from us that we are still paying today. It only left poverty, anger, division, illiteracy, and corruption.
Trump is the arrowhead of a deep-rooted fascist, racist dictatorial machinery supported by legions of brain-washed people who really believe their lives could be better in Trumpland.
From the highest donor to the lowest voter, all of them are part of a story that we in Europe, particularly in Spain, know very well.
Franco used God and freedom to justify his acts. North American fascists use the “founding fathers,” “freedom,” and end the corruption.
Where is the difference? There is none.
Indeed the U.S is under attack. But I never could imagine that its worse enemy would come from inside. North-American society needs to mobilize and show zero tolerance against fascism. If there is one society capable of articulating a movement for a cause is north American.
This mentality killed George Floyd. This mentality killed Breona Taylor. This mentality killed the 4 dead people in the Capitol assault. The “Hang Mike Pence” is part of this mentality.
The focus on what makes us different rather than on what unites us is part of this mentality. Catastrophic events across the world like genocides, poverty, corruption, wars, and injustice are part of this mentality.
Do you want to know what the worse enemy of fascism is? Democracy. Real democracy. Accepting people thinking differently, accepting governments winning elections that are not from your ideology, religion, or point of view.
My parents lived under the Franco regime. Just one generation separates me from this shameful episode of our history.
May you never transform into what you fought against.
Stay healthy.
Oliver.