Franco

Chronicles the life and rule of the Spanish dictator, from his early years to his military career to his leadership of the nation.

General Francisco Franco, also called the Caudillo, was the dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. His life has been examined in many previous biographies. However, most of these have been traditional, linear biographies that focus on Franco’s military and political careers, neglecting the significance of who exactly Franco was for the millions of Spaniards over whom he ruled for almost forty years. In this new biography Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez looks at Franco from a fresh perspective, emphasizing the cultural and social over the political. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco uses previously unknown archival sources to analyse how the dictator was portrayed by the propaganda machine, how the opposition tried to undermine his prestige, and what kind of opinions, rumours and myths people formed of him, and how all these changed over time. The author argues that the collective construction of Franco’s image emerged from a context of material needs, the political traumas caused by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the complex cultural workings of a society in distress, political manipulation, and the lack of any meaningful public debate. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco is a study of Franco’s life as experienced and understood by ordinary people; by those who loved or admired him, by those who hated or disliked him, and more generally, by those who had no option but to accommodate their existence to his rule. The book has a significance that goes well beyond Spain, as Cazorla-Sanchez explores the all-too-common experience of what it is like to live under the deep shadow cast by an always officially praised, ever present, and long lasting dictator.

Brave & Brilliant Series: No.1 The book of sensations / Sheri-D Wilson; No.2 Throwing the Diamond Hitch / Emily Ursuliak; No.3 Fail Safe / Nikki Sheppy; No.4 Quarry / Tanis Franco.

An excellent introduction to Franco's rise to power and his four decades as autocratic head of state in Spain.

On 20th November 1975, General Francisco Franco died in Madrid, just before his 83rd birthday. At the time of his death he had been the head of a dictatorial regime with the title of 'Caudillo' for almost 40 years. In this book, Enrique Moradiellos redraws Franco in three dimensions - Franco, the man; Franco, the Caudillo and Franco's Spain. In so doing, he offers a reappraisal of Franco's personality, his leadership style and the nature of the regime that he established and led until his death. As a dictator who established his power prior to World War II and maintained it well into the 1970s, Franco was one of the most central figures of twentieth-century European history. In Spain today, he is a spectre from a regrettable recent past, uncomfortable yet still very real and significant. Although a realtively minor dictator in comparison with Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin, Franco was more fortunate than them in terms of survival, long-lasting influence and public image. A study of his regime and its historical evolution sheds new light on fundamental questions of European history, including the social and cultural bases for totalitarian or authoritarian challenges to democracy and sources of political legitimacy grounded in the charisma of a leader. In this book, Enrique Moradiellos Garcia examines the dictatorship as well as the dictator and, in doing so, reveals new aspects to our understanding of General Franco, the Caudillo.

A collection of stories about troubled California teens and misfits follows the misadventures of a band of youths who experiment with vice in such tales as "American History" and "I Could Kill Someone."

Since the late twentieth century, the Venetian courtesan Veronica Franco has been viewed as a triumphant proto-feminist icon: a woman who celebrated her sexuality, an outspoken champion of women and their worth, and an important intellectual and cultural presence in sixteenth-century Venice. In Veronica Franco in Dialogue, Marilyn Migiel provides a nuanced account of Franco’s rhetorical strategies through a close analysis of her literary work. Focusing on the first fourteen poems in the Terze rime, a collection of Franco’s poems published in 1575, Migiel looks specifically at back-and-forth exchanges between Franco and an unknown male author. Migiel argues that in order to better understand what Franco is doing in the poetic collection, it is essential to understand how she constructs her identity as author, lover, and sex worker in relation to this unknown male author. Veronica Franco in Dialogue accounts for the moments of ambivalence, uncertainty, and indirectness in Franco’s poetry, as well as the polemicism and assertions of triumph. In doing so, it asks readers to consider their ideological investments in the stories we tell about early modern female authors and their cultural production.

General Francisco Franco came to prominence during the days of David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson and was able to cling to absolute political power until his death in 1975. Over his fifty-year career, he became one of the four dictators who changed the face of Europe during the twentieth century. Franco joined the Spanish Army when he was barely fifteen years old. In 1926 he became the youngest general in Europe and, driven by an astonishing sense of his own greatness, was recognized as sole military commander of the Nationalist zone during the Spanish Civil War. His ambition was always to hold on to the power that he had secured. In practice, this meant winning the Spanish Civil War and surviving the fall of the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini and the international isolation that followed their defeat. But behind the military heroics and dexterous political footwork lay an insecure and vengeful man, wracked by contradictory impulses. Although fueled by a single-minded determination to succeed, he was full of self-doubt. A bold and sometimes inspirational soldier in Africa, he became an indecisive, hesitant military commander during the Civil War. Filled with a burning conviction that his destiny was bound up with the medieval kings of Spain and God Himself, he appeared shy, withdrawn, and humble. Ruthlessly intent on wiping out all political opposition, he denied heatedly that he was a dictator. A stubborn man, he could be remarkably flexible when it came to safeguarding his power. Gabrielle Ashford Hodges' psychological biography considers Franco's mental state, as well as his political motivation. In doing so, it succeeds admirably in getting under the skin of Europe's most enduring dictator.