Franco: El dictador que moldeó un país / Franco: The Dictator Who Shaped a Country

by Giles Tremlett, María Serrano Giménez (translator), Pablo José Hermida Lazcano (translator)

En esta penetrante obra, el hispanista Giles Tremlett recorre la intensa vida y el legado de Francisco Franco, el enigmático dictador que definió el siglo XX de España.

Francisco Franco pasó en pocos años de ser un joven oficial anónimo a convertirse en el general más joven de Europa, conocido por su ambición, talento y capacidad de mando.

Sin embargo, su figura como uno de los dictadores más longevos de la historia contemporánea mundial sigue siendo objeto de debate. Con el golpe de Estado militar que lideró y el personalísimo régimen de influencias fascistas instaurado tras tres años de cruenta guerra civil, ¿destruyó una España pujante y modernizadora o salvó al país del caos izquierdista?

Esta nueva y ambiciosa biografía explora las complejidades de la personalidad de su difícil relación con un padre exigente y liberal, su mesiánica adopción de la guerra como forja de la nación y la formación de su ideología autoritaria. La historia continúa con su implacable liderazgo durante la Guerra Civil, sus alianzas con Hitler y Mussolini, y la Guerra Fría que a continuación le permitió rehabilitarse internacionalmente.

Tremlett estudia cómo Franco modeló España desde una perspectiva que cuestiona su caracterización como un líder vacilante. En realidad, presenta a un dictador obstinado y reaccionario, pero de ideas políticamente simples, que usó el terror para mantener su férreo control del país. Tras el fracaso de sus políticas autárquicas y obligado cambio de rumbo a mitad de camino, lo que acabaría siendo su legado más duradero (y sorprendentemente anacrónico) fue el largo periodo de estabilidad que permitió que, a su muerte, España se sacudiera el espíritu absolutista que él mismo representaba.

Sobre España. Una historia

«Un trepidante recorrido por la historia de España».
ABC

«Sabe cómo unir el rigor con una escritura fluida que atrapa desde el principio».
La Vanguardia

«Tremlett recorre la caótica historia de España con admirable claridad y estilo».
The Times

«Una excelente introducción a una larga e intrincada historia que se extiende a lo largo de miles de años».
San Francisco Book Review

«Un texto ágil e informativo... una amable introducción a la polifacética historia de España».
Publishers Weekly

«Tremlett es un guía sociocultural fascinante, igual de feliz comentando la victoria de España en la Copa del Mundo que su época de dominación musulmana».
The Guardian

«Una visión fresca y accesible de una historia inmensa».
Kirkus Reviews

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Spain, Biography

664 pages, Hardcover

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Giles Tremlett is the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent. He has lived in, and written about, Spain for the past twenty years.

Reviews

[History Today]

The bloody victor of the Spanish Civil War continues to evoke controversy. When, in 2011, Spain’s Royal Academy of History, under the supervision of a former Franco loyalist, published a dictionary describing Franco as ‘authoritarian, but not a dictator’, the backlash raged for years. The past quarter-century of Spanish public life has been shaped by so-called ‘memory wars’ in which both the intransigent left and right have politicised attempts to identify the mass graves of republican dead and unveil the convenient silence (‘pact of oblivion’) which overlay the latter two-thirds of Spain’s 20th century. Franco’s regime has been presented as authoritarian (Juan Linz), genocidal (Helen Graham), and fascistic in inception (Paul Preston). The regime’s apologists presented the personal rule of Western Europe’s last dictator as developmentalist, providential, even as an ‘organic democracy’. In this biography, Giles Tremlett describes Franco as ‘a giant dam, determined to control the flow of Spanish history’. However, 50 years after his death in November 1975, ‘what surprises is not the size of the dam that was opened after he died, but the ideological emptiness that lay behind it’.

Mediocre, incurious, and obsequious towards his Axis patrons, Franco had none of the charisma of Mussolini or Mao, nor any of the avuncular qualities of the sister regime of Salazar in Portugal. It is faint praise to rate him less fanatically murderous than Adolf Hitler, or less tyrannically ruthless than Joseph Stalin (even though Franco possessed as much internal power as Europe’s bloodiest totalitarians). Tremlett’s Franco is a cautious, ambitious, and unthinkingly authoritarian man, youthfully brave in Spanish Morocco, callously attritional in middle age leading the rebels to victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), and vindictive and shifty in the grey areas of politics thereafter. Unrivalled at dividing and ruling allies and enemies alike, he was also prone to delusions which only his peculiar luck prevented from unravelling his regime at home and abroad.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...

Mark Lawrence is Senior Lecturer in Military History at the University of Kent.

[John Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've just finished the audiobook version of Giles Tremlett's new and exceptional biography. The audiobook is read superbly with excellent Spanish pronunciation. The only quibble, and it's a tiny one, is the mispronunciation of John Foster Dulles as "Dules". That aside, it's a great listen.

The book itself is a much needed update on the subject. Paul Preston's biography was published in 1993 and 32 years later Tremlett has gained further insight on the long term impact that Franco had on Spain and Spaniards. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of this book is making the fiendishly complex history of the Nationalist Rebellion and the subsequent civil war seem simple to understand without being too reductionist in his narrative.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Spanish Civil War and its lasting impact on Spain through the resulting 36 year dictatorship.

[Jerry Edward Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Francisco Franco may be one of the 20th century’s less well known autocrats. He has proven, furthermore, to be one of the 20th century’s most enduring autocrats. As with Russia’s Vlademir Putin, Franco expressly set out to establish his nation in the historical image he believed once existed with all its imperial perceived glory. Putin is likely to be much more widely known today to the average reader. This new biography examines how Franco rose to power in Spain during its 1930s Civil War and wielded absolute power until his death in 1975. The author is a British-born journalist who has resided in Spain for many years. The author has shown a real fondness for Spanish history, travel, and culture in much of his writing including a well-received biography of Catharine of Aragon. His biography of Isabella of Castile was the winner of the 2018 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. The author introduces Franco as a “military messiah” whom many had underestimated before his Spanish Civil War success. That failure to recognize the steely ambition driving Franco was to continue even until his death in 1975. Franco was to prove to be a very complicated man. He was compared by some to El Cid, the great Spanish national hero. He could be coldly calculating; he could prove to be slow and cautious. He never admitted any mistakes or failures. Franco proved to be one of history’s most successful dictators. His rule in Spain from 1939 until 1975 came as Europe dramatically changed from its Second War trauma. Franco outliving his closest contemporaries, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, is further evidence of his ability to adapt to changing political and social conditions. This book is highly recommended to all interested readers in Spanish history and the historic personalities who dramatically defined the way we understand the 20th century.