Francoism in Catalonia was established within Francoist Spain between 1939 and 1975 (with the first democratic elections taking place on June 15, 1977),El franquisme a Catalunya, Paul Preston, p. 14 following the Spanish Civil War and post-war Francoist repression. Francisco Franco's regime replaced Revolutionary Catalonia after the Catalonia Offensive at the end of the war. The dictatorship in Catalonia complemented the suppression of democratic freedoms with the repression of Catalan culture. Its totalitarian character and its unifying objectives meant the imposition of a single culture and a single language, Castillian. The regime was specifically anti-Catalan, but this did not stop the development of a Catalan Francoism that was forged during the war and fed by victory.Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, volum XI". Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana S.A., Juliol de 1990, p. 339. .
Francoism meant, in Catalonia as with the rest of Spain, the cancellation of democratic freedoms, the prohibition and persecution of political parties (except the Falange Espanyola Tradicionalista i de les JONS), the closure of the free press, and the elimination of leftist organisations. In addition, the Statute of Autonomy and its associated institutions were abolished, and the Catalan language and culture were systematically persecuted, at least to begin with, in public and even initially in private.
To the many deaths in the civil war were added those who were shot after the Francoist victory like the president Lluís Companys; many others were forced into exile, unable to return to their country. Many who did not flee were imprisoned or "deprived" and disqualified from holding public office or working in certain professions, which left them in a dire economic situation during already difficult times. A small group of anarchists and communists were intent on waging a guerrilla war in units known as the maquis. Their most notable action was the invasion of the Vall d'Aran.
After the first stage of a self-sufficient economy, in the 1960s the economy entered into a stage of agricultural modernization, an increase in industry, and mass tourism. Catalonia was also the destination for many migrants, which accelerated the growth of Barcelona and the surrounding regions. The anti-Franco opposition was well developed, seen mostly visibly in the labour movement with the Commissions Obreres (workers' commissions), trade unions, and the PSUC.
In the 1970s, democratic forces were unified around the Assembly of Catalonia. On November 20, 1975, the dictator Franco died, opening a new period in the history of Catalonia.
Anti-Catalan hostility
Catalonia suffered the most fierce engagements during the civil war, as seen in several examples. In Tarragona, in January 1939, mass was held by a canon from Salamanca cathedral, José Artero. During the sermon he cried: "Catalan dogs! You are not worthy of the sun that shines on you." ("¡Perros catalanes! No sois dignos del sol que os alumbra.") Regarding the men who entered and marched through Barcelona, Franco said the honour was not "because they had fought better, but because they were those who felt more hatred. That is, more hatred towards Catalonia and Catalans." ("porque hubieran luchado mejor, sino porque eran los que sentían más odio. Es decir, más odio hacia Cataluña y los catalanes.")
A close friend of Franco, Victor Ruiz Albéniz, published an article in which he demanded that Catalonia receive "a Biblical punishment (Sodom and Gomarrah) to purify the red city, the headquarters of anarchism and separatism as the only remedy to remove these two cancers by relentless cauterisation" ("un castigo bíblico (Sodoma y Gomorra) para purificar la ciudad roja, la sede del anarquismo y separatismo como único remedio para extirpar esos dos cánceres por termocauterio implacable"), while for Serrano Suñer, brother-in-law of Franco and Minister of the Interior, Catalan nationalism was "an illness" ("una enfermedad.")
The man appointed as civil governor of Barcelona, Wenceslao González Oliveros, said that "Spain was raised, with as much or more force against the dismembered statutes as against Communism and that any tolerance of regionalism would again lead to the same processes of putrefaction that we have just surgically removed." ("España se alzó, con tanta o más fuerza contra los Estatutos desmembrados que contra el comunismo y que cualquier tolerancia del regionalismo llevaría otra vez a los mismos procesos de putrefacción que acabamos de extirpar quirúrgicamente.")
Even Catalan conservatives, such as Francesc Cambó, were themselves frightened by Franco's hatred and spirit of revenge. Cambó wrote of Franco in his diary: "As if he did not feel or understand the miserable, desperate situation in which Spain finds itself and only thinks about his victory, he feels the need to travel the whole country (...) like a bullfighter to gather applause, cigars, hats and some scarce American." ("Como si no sintiera ni comprendiera la situación miserable, desesperada, en que se encuentra España y no pensara más que en su victoria, siente la necesidad de recorrer todo el país (...) como un torero para recoger aplausos, cigarros, sombreros y alguna americana escasa.")
The 2nd president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Lluís Companys, went into exile in France, like many others, in January 1939. The Spanish authorities asked for him to be extradited to Germany. The questions remains whether he was detained by the Gestapo or the German military police, known as the Wehrmacht. In any case, he was detained on August 13, 1940, and immediately deported to Franco's Spain.
After a summary court martial without due process, he was executed on October 15, 1940, at Montjuïc Castle. Since then there have been many calls to cancel that judgement, without success.El Govern de la Generalitat demana l'anul·lació del judici contra Lluís Companys
Francoist repression The confluence between Spanish regenerationism and the degenerationist theories originated in France and Great Britain must also be considered. As a consequence is theorized a racial degeneration causing conflicts against the social status quo, and it is advocated eugenics to cleanse one's own race, and racism to avoid mixing it with "inferior races." During the first third of the s. XX this theorizing towards the "new man" is gaining strength, and its zenith is Nazi racial politics. But in Spain it also had an impact, given that the political and social elites who patrimonialize Spain, and who would not digest the colonial loss, see in the Republic and the meager Catalan autonomy a threat to its status, power and wealth. The Catalan industrial wealth cannot be tolerated either, and Catalonia is accused of having a favorable treatment, impoverishing the rest of the Spaniards, in a behavior that is described as Semitic (according to the National-Socialist ideology to use work as a means to exploit and subjugate nations).
According to Paul Preston in the book "Arquitectes del terror. Franco i els artifex de l'odi", a number of characters theorized about "anti-Spain", pointing to enemies, and in this sense accused politicians and republican intellectuals of being of Jewish race or servants of the same as masons. This accusation is widespread in Catalonia for most politicians and intellectuals, starting with Macià, Companys and Cambó, identified as Jews. "Racisme i supremacisme polítics a l'Espanya contemporània" documents this thought of the social part that would be raised against the Republic. In a mixture of degenerationism, regenerationism, and neocolonialism, it is postulated that the Spanish race—always understood as Castilian—has degenerated, and degenerate individuals are prone to "contract" communism and separatism. In addition, some areas, such as the south of the peninsula and the Catalan countries, are considered to be degenerate wholesale, the former due to Arab remains that lead them to a "rifty" behavior, and the latter due to Semitic remains that lead them towards communism and separatism (the catalanism of any kind is called separatism).
The degeneration of individuals calls for a cleansing if it wants a prosperous and leading nation, capable of building an empire, one of the obsessions of Franco (as well as other totalitarian regimes of the time). In this regard, rebel spokesman Gonzalo de Aguilera, in 1937, told a journalist: "Now I hope you understand what we mean by the regeneration of Spain ... Our program consists of exterminating a third of the Spanish male population ...", and an interview can also be mentioned in an Italian newspaper where Franco describes that the war was aimed at "to save the Homeland that was sinking in the sea of dissociation and racial degeneration"
In addition to the repression throughout Spain against certain individuals, all this seems to be the source of the fierce repression, such as the Terror of Don Bruno, in Andalusia, and the no less fierce repression against Catalonia, with the addition that as a result, the attack on Catalan culture, lasted throughout the Franco regime and ended up becoming a structural element of the state.
Persecution of Catalan
During the dictatorship of Franco (1939–1975), not only democratic freedoms were suppressed, but also the Catalan language, which was excluded from the education system and relegated to the family sphere. Castillian (Spanish) became the only language of education, administration and the media.
Rafael Aracil, Joan Oliver and Antoni Segura considered that until 1951, the persecution of the language was "total".Aracil et al., Mundo actual 273 In some places students had to denounce fellow students who spoke Catalan. During this period, the Catalan language was also prohibited on tombstones.
With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the regime changed their image, which allowed the Orfeó Català to put on Catalan productions, and the publication of Catalan books, though only classic works; works aimed at young people were prohibited to limit the learning of the written language. Among these authors were those who returned from exile in 1942–1943. Their works include a Catalan translation of the Odyssey (1948) by Carles Riba, and research conducted by teacher Alexandre Galí with Història de les Institucions 1900–1936 (History of Institutions), which even today are reference works.
Later on, opening of the regime allowed a small change in the marginalization of the language, such as the broadcast in 1964 of the first Catalan television program on TVE (Teatre català), the Nova Cançó (New Song) (1961) movement, and the creation in 1971 of the Assembly of Catalonia, in which anti-Francoist forces were clustered, all maintained the use of Catalan, though there were limits such as the ban on Joan Manuel Serrat singing in Catalan at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1968.Solé, Villarroya, repressió 217 In 1970, Franco's education law opened the door to the use of different languages in primary education, with another decree following in 1975. Also in 1975, near Franco's death, another decree allowed the use of other native Spanish languages in councils.
The use of Catalan language was further reduced due to migration of Spanish speakers in the 20th century, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, from the rest of Spain, especially Andalusia and Extremadura, who were for the most part concentrated around metropolitan Barcelona. The result was that Spanish passed Catalan as a mother tongue for the first time in the history of Catalonia. It has been calculated that, without immigration, the population of Catalonia would have gone from about 2 million in 1900 to 2.4 million in 2001, instead of more than 6.1 million; in other words, without immigration the population would have been 39% of its actual size by 1980.