Spanish army hails record of fascist dictator Francisco Franco
By
Alejandro Lopez
10 August 2018
With a statement hailing fascist dictator Francisco Franco, 181 retired top Spanish army officers have declared their support for Franco’s policy of mass murder to crush opposition in the working class. It is a warning to workers not only in Spain, but across Europe and internationally. Amid rising social anger and strike activity against austerity and militarism across Europe, the ruling class in desperation is plotting civil war to suppress social opposition.
The July 31 manifesto, “Declaration of Respect to General Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Soldier of Spain,” signed by a group of retired generals, colonels, admirals and frigate captains including the former head of Spain’s land army until 2016, General Juan Enrique Aparicio, is unambiguous. Published in the pro-Francoite Asociación de Militares Españoles (AME-Association of Spanish Soldiers), it endorses as the savior of Spain a fascist dictator who butchered hundreds of thousands of workers during the Spanish Civil War and founded a brutal, 40-year fascist dictatorship.
They criticize the new Podemos-backed minority Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government’s cynical attempt to rally support among workers and youth with a few impotent criticisms of Franco, including plans to move Franco’s remains out of a mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen. They are well aware that the PSOE’s pro-austerity government is deeply unpopular due to its austerity policies, and that it hangs by a thread.
Attacking the PSOE’s hypocrisy, they note that its anti-Franco campaign promotes “a false progressiveness that hides the reality of the Nation’s current territorial collapse and the evident inequality among the…