Originally posted by Francisco Franco:

I am responsible only to God and history.

Francisco Franco, in full Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde, (born Dec. 4, 1892, El Ferrol, Spain—died Nov. 20, 1975, Madrid), Spanish general and head of the government of Spain (1939–75). A career army officer, he was noted as a skillful leader and became army chief of staff in 1935. He joined the insurgents in the Spanish Civil War and was named El Caudillo (“The Leader”) of the Nationalist forces (1936). In 1937 he reorganized the fascist Falange party into a more pluralistic group and made it the regime’s official political movement. Though in sympathy with the Axis Powers in World War II, Spain remained formally neutral, but after the war Franco was ostracized as the “last surviving fascist dictator.” Relations with other nations regularized with the onset of the Cold War, as Franco became a leading anticommunist statesman. In the 1950s and ’60s, his domestic policies moderated, and Spain made great economic progress. He provided for his succession by an official referendum in 1947 that made the Spanish state a monarchy, ratifying his powers as regent for life. In 1969 he designated Prince Juan Carlos as his successor.

Spanish Civil War, (1936–39) Military revolt against the government of Spain. After the 1936 elections produced a Popular Front government supported mainly by left-wing parties, a military uprising began in garrison towns throughout Spain, led by the rebel Nationalists and supported by conservative elements in the clergy, military, and landowners as well as the fascist Falange. The ruling Republican government, led by the socialist premiers Francisco Largo Caballero and Juan Negrín (1894–1956) and the liberal president Manuel Azaña y Díaz, was supported by workers and many in the educated middle class as well as militant anarchists and communists. Government forces put down the uprising in most regions except parts of northwestern and southwestern Spain, where the Nationalists held control and named Francisco Franco head of state. Both sides repressed opposition; together, they executed or assassinated more than 50,000 suspected enemies to their respective causes. Seeking aid from abroad, the Nationalists received troops, tanks, and planes from Nazi Germany and Italy, which used Spain as a testing ground for new methods of tank and air warfare. The Republicans (also called loyalists) were sent matériel mainly by the Soviet Union, and the volunteer International Brigades also joined the Republicans. The two sides fought fierce and bloody skirmishes in a war of attrition. The Nationalist side gradually gained territory and by April 1938 succeeded in splitting Spain from east to west, causing 250,000 Republican forces to flee into France. In March 1939 the remaining Republican forces surrendered, and Madrid, beset by civil strife between communists and anticommunists, fell to the Nationalists on March 28. About 500,000 people died in the war, and all Spaniards were deeply scarred by the trauma. The war’s end brought a period of dictatorship that lasted until the mid-1970s.