Viva Cristo Rey, El Caudillo's battle cry

Generalísimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead -- And His Statues Are Next

Socialist Government Banishes Fascist Icons Though Nostalgia for the Dictator Lives On

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123594813501604681.html

Franco's Spain is nearly gone.

The Socialist government of Spain is continuing its efforts to tarnish Franco and his memory, while white washing their own disgusting history. The anecdotes are endless...allow me to briefly describe a handful of events that could be used to accurately memorialize Franco's opposition from the 1930's

-In the first three months of the Spanish Civil War in 1933 more than 3,000 unarmed priests, nuns, and brothers were systemically executed and assassinated. How about a series of massive bronze statues in a square of Barcelona that shows five priests on their knees with arms extended to give blessings to their assassins as they are mowed down by gun shots. (Autopsies of the brothers often showed the bullets had entered their hands and wrists, then traveled all the way up their arms into their shoulders because they were in the process of blessing their persecutors while being executed.)

-More priests and religious were killed in 6 months in Spain, by Franco's opposition, than in any time since the persecutions of Diocletian. Diocletian had ordered Roman soldiers to go house to house to uproot each and every Christian, if someone refused to offer a sacrifice to Rome's gods, then he was promptly executed. How about a plaque in Bilbao, which indicates these statistics and comparisons. Is this good company for Franco's enemies to be in?

-Sometimes fiction is stronger than reality...Ernest Hemingway spent time in Spain during the Civil War and his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in that Civil War. How about we place a sculpted relief before Madrid's weekly flea market which shows Hemingway's account of Pablo's anti-Franco volunteers taking over their local village. The highlight of the relief would be how the gauntlet of thresher, club, and scythe wielders formed to hack the "Fascist Nationalists" that supported Franco's side into pieces before they were thrown over a cliff. And to think Franco's government found cause to execute the perpetrators?

-My old friend Maria Luisa de Castro, born and raised in Algeciras, had some good tales her grandmother passed down to her from when she was a child in the 1930's. Maria once recounted to me how her grandmother described seeing Franco's enemies publicly executing Franco's supporters in the streets while she was enroute to elementary school...just like the Goya painting, I believe.

-My personal favorite, because it's the least gory of these anecdotes, would be to have a larger than life bronze of the leader of Franco's enemies handing over pallet upon pallet of solid gold bars to be delivered to Stalin for safe-keeping, in case Franco were to sack Madrid. It is said that Stalin gave a gleeful toast the day Spain's entire gold reserve was delivered to Russia. Apparently it is still being held, it has not been returned.

-They could also publish pamphlets that include mention of Spain's birth-rates since the socialists took over...according to Mark Steyn (Canadian extraordinaire) Spain is so far beneath the replacement rate that they may never recover. A Spain without Spaniards, imagine that. IT is certainly a less visible means to depopulate your nation, unlike the mass drownings that Robespierre, Danton and Marat orchestrated in the Vendee during the French Revolution.

A lovely segment of the article, from which this post stems, is as follows:

"The left is attempting to rewrite our country's history. They base it on a series of half-lies, half-truths and outright lies," says Mr. Bezanilla. The 44-year-old municipal worker was just 11 when Franco died. But he has read volumes on the former dictator's ideas and is nostalgic for his regime.

More than three decades after Franco died and 72 years after he seized power, Spain is on a controversial mission to expunge the many emblems of its painful past that are still on public display.

We should not forget that it was just in the 1990's that his Holiness, Pope John Paul II, beatified several hundred of the soldiers that fought with and for Franco; against the anarchist, communist, socialist, and Trotskyite popular front government that had given Spain's gold reserve away and executed thousands of priests and religious. John Paul II's profound declaration regarding Franco's soldiers was and remains the largest mass beatification in history!

Some parting thoughts...Franco followed the centralized, planned government structure of fascist principles (ones which I do not support mind you), the racism of Hitler and the expansionism of Hitler and Mussolini (fascism's founder) were never a part of Franco's reign. Franco actually withdrew Spanish forces back into Spain, vowing never to draw his sword again except in defense of Spain. Franco did meet with Hitler at the height of WWII. Franco refused to send any forces to assist Hitler...he only allowed volunteers to enlist in the war against Communist Russia (which was also executing Christians-Belarus was once 98% Catholic, today it is 2%. Hitler declared that he would "rather have two teethed pulled than to ever go through a meeting with that man [Franco] again." Know of any other leaders from Franco's era that stood up to Hitler that well??? Neville Chamberlain is still a laughing stock for the way he was played by Hitler. Not so with El Caudillo, aka Franco, whose supporters and soldiers were notorious for shouting Viva Cristo Rey, Long Live Christ the King!