This episode dives into the rise of Spanish fascism, the Spanish Civil War, and the long shadow of Francisco Franco. We unravel how Spain’s brand of authoritarianism differed from its Italian and German cousins, how the Civil War became a proxy fight between democracy and fascism, and why Spain’s dictatorship endured for decades after WWII while the Axis regimes collapsed. We dig into the murky politics of the 1930s, the church’s role, the elite’s fear of socialism, the failed Popular Front experiment, the bloody purges on both sides, and how Franco cleverly played Hitler, avoided WWII, and rebranded himself into the West’s “acceptable fascist” during the Cold War. It’s a sweeping tour from Primo de Rivera to Guernica to the Pact of Forgetting and the strange evolution of fascism as it mutates into new forms.
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