Is Spain’s younger generation drifting back towards Franco’s shadow? writes Shelagh Fogarty

General Antonio Tejero was his name. All bar one defiant MP, leapt below their chairs for dear life and for twenty two hours Tejero held Spain’s elected politicians hostage and the fate of their country in a terrifying headlock.

Here at home in the UK we were gearing up for the wedding of the century, Charles and Diana’s nuptials, while the place we relied on for a sunny holiday was on the brink of who knew what?

Enter the young King Juan Carlos, just six years into his reign. He held firm, took to the airwaves to urge the armed forces to stay loyal to him to continue on the path of democracy. They did. The siege ended. Tejero was jailed for thirty years and well, Viva España!

This weekend marks 50 years since Juan Carlos - now in exile - took to the Spanish throne in 1975. His own father never did because a certain general, Francisco Franco, took power and instead led a highly authoritarian regime until his death in 1975.

Franco eventually opted for a return to monarchy but imagined a very different one than his ‘protege’ Juan Carlos quickly delivered.

‘El Caudillo’, as Franco preferred to be called, couldn’t control the House of Bourbon any more and the new king immediately instituted a liberal constitutional monarchy akin to our own.

The Bourbons and the Windsors are cousins so you can bet your bottom dollar ‘conversations were had’. The current Spanish King, Felipe, is a Knight of the Garter.

So what about now? In today’s Spain, as victims of Franco’s extremism still look for answers and acknowledgement, young Spaniards in big numbers are getting misty eyed about the old Caudillo.

Worries over housing, jobs, immigration - sound familiar? - are causing some to look again at the man who plunged the country into civil war, forced unmarried women to give up their babies (Church and state even kidnapping them) and cracked down on the beautiful kaleidoscope of languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula - Catalan, Basque, Gallego.

I taught in a Barcelona school in the late 80s and found pupils whose grandparents had been jailed for speaking their mother tongue! It’s probably why I speak Catalan at all. Those kids loved their language. Their families had fought for it.

I was an au pair for a lovely Madrid family before that. We spent the Summer in Seville with their grandparents and that was another education.

Grandpa was a proud Francista - a photo of them together graced the mantlepiece. He’d spin in his grave at the fact that 20% of the population is now born elsewhere.

Young people look at what left wing globalism has bequeathed them and are wondering if they had Franco all wrong.

The young are turning away from Socialism in Spain. Will they go even further and embrace a politics I certainly thought was dead and buried with Franco.

____________________

Listen to LBC's Shelagh Fogarty from 1-4pm Monday to Friday on the new LBC app.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk