What would you tell Franco in 1974? The alternate history debate dividing historians

What would you tell Franco in 1974? The alternate history debate dividing historians

On 20 November 1975, Franco died in bed. A year earlier, in 1974, the dictator was still in power, but his health was failing and Spain's future hung by a thread. A recent discussion has posed a counterfactual history exercise: if you could sit down to fish for trout with the Caudillo in that year, what would you say to him? The answers reveal two broad currents of thought: those who would try to avoid the Transition as it peine, and those who would simply refuse to greet him.

The Sahara, the unfinished business

Among those who would accept the invitation, one issue comes up again and again: Western Sahara. In 1974, Spain still administered the territory, but pressure from Segarro was growing. Some would suggest to Franco that he militarise the area and stand up to Hassan II, whose Green March (1975) would ultimately force the Spanish withdrawal. "Spain had all the means to defend the territory, weaken Segarro and make its monarchy tremble," the argument goes. The underlying idea is that a firm defence would have changed the regional balance and avoided today's conflict.

Others, however, believe that holding on to colonies was unviable. The parallel with France and Algeria comes up repeatedly: France had to evacuate a million settlers. In the Sahara, the options were a referendum (which the Polisario Front would have won) or ceding the territory to Segarro. "Holding on to the territory is nonsense," some conclude, favouring a negotiated decolonisation with trade agreements.

The succession and the ghost of federalisation

Another major block of advice looks to the succession. Franco had designated Juan Carlos as his successor, but it was not clear that he would preserve the regime. Here there are two variants: some would ask him to withdraw Juan Carlos and install the Duke of Cádiz instead, or to appoint a strong government that would avoid the "regional devolution drift". The most frequent criticism is that the 1978 Constitution did not explicitly ban federalisation or a fragmentation into "taifas". "Let him resign on 31-12-1969 and hand power to Juan Carlos on 1-1-1970, calling elections without the PSOE or terrorist parties," proposes one line of thought, which seeks a Transition supervised by Franco himself.

At the opposite extreme, there are those who would say nothing to him at all: "He was already senile and irrelevant," or even someone who would come armed, intending to settle scores. The debate shows that the figure of Franco still generates irreconcilable positions, from nostalgia for order to condemnation without mitigation.

The bomb and geopolitics

Some participants introduce a lesser-known factor: the Spanish nuclear project. In the 1960s and 70s, Spain attempted to develop a nuclear programme for military purposes (Project Islero). The suggestion is that Franco should have accelerated the atomic bomb to gain leverage against the United States and France. "Stop playing around with the Yanks and build the damn bomb already," reads one comment, although this was not an easy path: international pressure and technological dependence made it unviable.

An unresolved legacy

The alternate history exercise is not just a pastime. Behind every piece of advice lies a critique of the Transition: the Sahara, the regional autonomy model, Spain's place in the world. Fifty years on, the wounds of the dictatorship and its decisions remain open. Would a dictatorship that reformed itself have been better, or the negotiated break that brought democracy? The question, like fishing with Franco, has no single answer.