This is what Spain would be like if Franco had lost the civil war

An alternative vision of history, often called uchronia, invites us to imagine what Spain would have been like if the outcome of the Civil War, which began in 1936, had been different. What would have been the future of the country if the republican forces had defeated Franco?

To begin with, and this is quite evident, the rebellious generals (Franco, Mola, Sanjurjo...) would have suffered the reprisals typical of any war: shooting or, in the case of escaping, exile.

It is possible to fantasize that Franco could have escaped Republican persecution by flying to Berlin, where Hitler would have protected him. Of course, such protection would have lasted only until the defeat of the Reich.

Continuing with our speculative narrative line, it could also have been that, with Hitler fallen in Germany, Francisco Franco would have taken refuge (as so many persecuted Nazis did after World War II) in Argentina. There perhaps he would have changed his identity and gotten lost in the immensity of the Argentine plains to start a new life.

Image: Angélica Reyes / Unsplash

An element of the landscape of the Madrid mountains that would not have existed if Franco had lost: that pharaonic mausoleum called Valley of the Fallen and now renamed due to controversy as Cuelgamuros (original name of that enclave).

Then there is the question of whether Spain would have been able to emerge from a civil war won by the heterogeneous republican forces. It is obvious that Spain would have become a republican country with a tricolor flag, but what type of republic would have been established?

If the 1931 Constitution had remained in force after the civil war, Spain would become a conventional republic, a democracy comparable to that of other European countries. And logic indicates that, along these lines, Spanish democracy would have made a journey towards prosperity similar to that of other countries after World War II.

Image: De Sucesores de Rivadeneyra (SA), Imprenta (Madrid) - Spanish Wikipedia, Public domain

Spain would have been spared the years of Francoist repression that saw thousands imprisoned and executed for their political ideas. It would also have been easier to have economic cooperation with abroad that would have allowed for progress towards the European scenario that, in the post-war period, consolidated the so-called Welfare State (whose arrival was late in Spain).

Franco's victory also meant an enormous loss in terms of figures of high culture. Antonio Machado died in exile and great artists such as Severo Ochoa, Luis Buñuel, Rafael Alberti, Pedro Salinas also had to go into exile. What would culture and science have been like in Spain if all of them had been able to develop their talent? In their homeland, without the miseries and difficulties of fleeing to another country? Better, of course.

It is also plausible that a republican Spain in the 1940s would have been in tune with the industrial development that restarted after World War II. The autarky and economic isolation of the first years of the Franco dictatorship would not have existed.

Of course, there is also the possibility that, as right-wing historians claim, Spain was about to lean towards Soviet totalitarianism and would have ended up establishing a socialist regime in the style of the USSR.

In this scenario, Santiago Carrillo, in those years an ambitious young leader of the Spanish Communist Party, could have ended up as president of Spain.

At the end of World War II, the logical thing is that Spain would have joined the Warsaw Pact where all the satellites of the USSR were, from Hungary and Czechoslovakia to Poland.

So Spain would have joined the lifestyle of socialist countries, without a free market, with a single party and with those characteristic queues at the doors of the commercial establishments where basic products were sold.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the decomposition of the socialist bloc, Spain would have had to rejoin the European reality. Surely in much weaker conditions than those that the Spanish economy now has.

So there are two alternative futures that could have opened up if back in 1939, the defenders of the Republic had won the civil war. The tricolor flag would fly on official buildings and who knows what would become of this country so given to convulsions.

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