El Generalísimo: A Biography of Francisco Franco

by Giles Tremlett

The first biography exploring both Francisco Franco's life and the enduring legacy of Francoism

Supported by his allies, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco rose to power by defeating the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War that lasted from 1936 to 1939. Yet while Hitler and Mussolini did not survive World War II, Franco remained Spain's strongman ruler until his death thirty years later. Perhaps more compelling than how he gained absolute power is how he retained it for so long, virtually unopposed, making him one of history's most successful dictators.

In El Generalisimo, Giles Tremlett reveals how Franco's ascent and extraordinary endurance stemmed from his determination to reverse history, returning Spain to its glory days as a globe-spanning empire. Fuelled by paranoia, a rigid sense of order and tradition, and a belief in the redemptive power of warfare--all the earmarks of fascism--Franco moved rapidly through the ranks in the army and took advantage of political and social upheaval to launch a revolt against democracy. He was determined to rescue Catholic Spain from a conspiracy of leftists, freemasons, liberals and their foreign or Jewish sponsors.

The Spanish Civil War served as the opening salvo of World War II, yet after it was over, despite ending up on the wrong side of history, Franco consolidated his hold on power, combining an iron grip with elements of benevolent rule to maintain popularity and weaken would-be opponents. anyone who considered opposing him. In the modernizing and democratizing postwar world, Franco was able to parlay cold war politics into a survival strategy. Those nations, including the United States, who had once denounced and dismissed him as a fascist relic actively sought him out as a partner in the fight against communism.

For over three decades Franco presided over a Spain that was rapidly urbanizing and industrializing, opening itself up to tourism. Yet while social and political upheaval swept through Western Europe, Spain remained a comparative backwater, frozen in time. Francoism had offered itself as a bulwark against instability and it proved an ideology that many Spaniards learned to live with, one that has left its mark to this day.

Genres: Spain, History, Nonfiction, Biography, European History

518 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 6, 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.