Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (Spanish pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko ˈfɾaŋko βaˈmonde]; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who was the dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. Coming from a military background, he became the youngest general in Europe in the 1920s. A strong conservative, he was shocked when the monarchy was removed and replaced with a republic in 1931. With the 1936 elections, the conservatives fell and the leftist Popular Front came to power. Looking to overthrow the republic, Franco and other generals staged a partially successful coup, which started the Spanish Civil War. With the death of the other generals, Franco quickly became his faction's only leader. Franco received military support from local fascist, monarchist and right-wing groups, and also from Hitler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Fascist Italy, while the Popular Front received help from Stalin's USSR. Leaving half a million dead, the war was eventually won by Franco in 1939. He established an autocratic dictatorship, Francoist Spain, which he defined as a totalitarian state, installing himself as head of state (Caudillo de España, a term seen as the equivalent of the fascist terms duce in Italy and Führer in German) and government, with one legal political party: a merger of the monarchist party and the fascist party which had helped him, FET y de las JONS. Franco established a repression which was characterized by concentration camps, forced labor and executions, mostly against political and ideological enemies, being estimated to have caused from about 200,000 to 400,000 deaths, depending on how death in the more than 190 concentration camps is considered. Arguing that Spain was exhausted following the civil war, Franco remained neutral during the Second World War (with the exception of the short-lived Blue Division). During the Cold War, Franco's regime was assisted by the United States against the USSR and it saw a progressive economical development and a timid democratic improvement. After a 36-year rule, Franco died in 1975. According to the 1947 referendum, he restored the monarchy before his death, which made King Juan Carlos I his successor. Juan Carlos led the transition to democracy, which effectively created Spain's current political system.