Francisco Franco's Policies on Minorities

[seventeethdecember2016]

I am really intrigued on what his policies on minorities might be. He was allies with Hitler, yet he had Jewish roots. While Germany and Italy were killing Jews in the Holocaust, he let them take refuge, in his country, to escape the Holocaust. Spain has a rich Jewish and Islamic history, which progressed his country very much, so I don't see why a Fascist/Nationalist, like him, wouldn't uphold such things. He also had colonies in North Africa, which had many Muslims.

My question is, how were minorities treated in Francoist Spain?

[Prometeo liberado]

Ask the people who have the longest documented history in europe, the Basque. Anyways it's not so much how this or that group were treated so much as the population as a whole were treated.

[DDR]

Very poorly, the moorocan troops used in the civil war as soon as the war ended were sent back to Africa. Also gypsies had a hard time, because of their nomadic life style had a lot of truble with the Guardia Civil. Even to this day when something is weird is comon to say "that's weirder than a gypsy Civil Guard".

As for Jews, well some Spaniardds save them in WWII, lots of sefardies in Hungary, but also Franco always spoke of the judeo-mason international conspitarion. As well He gave save heaven and passage to lots of nazis after the war.

And for the national minorities in Spain, well we wanted to exterminate them, as it is every spanish fascist wet dream.

[Luís Henrique]

And for the national minorities in Spain, well we wanted to exterminate them, as it is every spanish fascist wet dream.

Far from me to defend Franco, but I think there is a conflation here.

Yes, Franco's politics was one of making Spain homogeneous, and of getting rid of national or ethnic minorities in Spain. His method however was not the Hitlerist method of physical extermination, but rather that of cultural assimilation. He forbade the use of Basque, Galician and Catalan languages, but I don't think he had any endlösung solution in his prospects regarding those people.

Luís Henrique

[x359594]

...His method however was not the Hitlerist method of physical extermination, but rather that of cultural assimilation. He forbade the use of Basque, Galician and Catalan languages, but I don't think he had any endlösung solution in his prospects regarding those people....

For a contrary view see Paul Preston's The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in 20th Century Spain (2012.) With its immense documentation — 120 pages of endnotes to both published and unpublished material in at least five languages, including corrections of errors in these sources, Preston convincingly shows (in my view) that Franco and his cohorts sought to "cleanse" the country not only of minorities but of people who "do not think as we do" as General Mola put it.

Their methods ranged from systematic killings and judicial murders to the abuse of women and children, imprisonment, torture and to delivering Spaniards into the hands of the Gestapo. General Queipo de Llano, whose troops laid waste to south-western Spain, called it "the purification of the Spanish people".

And incidentally, the principal synagogue in Barcelona remained closed from March 1939 until 1977. And it's important to remember that Franco's dictatorship has never been delegitimised since his death in 1975, notwithstanding the symbolic measures of recent years.