Francisco Franco

1892 – 1975

Francisco Franco Bahamonde was a Spanish general and military dictator who led the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939 and then ruled Spain as Caudillo from 1939 until his death in 1975. With military assistance from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy he overthrew the democratic Second Spanish Republic, conducted mass executions of political opponents during and after the war, and established a 36-year dictatorship of authoritarian Catholic nationalism. The Pact of Forgetting that followed his death long suppressed Spain's reckoning with the war's mass graves, which remain partially unrecovered to this day.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM