50 years. Cartoon from 20/11/20025 in CTXT
Translation of the cartoon. "It's been 50 years since Franco did his best work."
Last 20 November was the 50th anniversary of Franco's death. Nothing special happened on that day. As far as we have been able to confirm from reliable sources, the dictator is still dead.
As for this year's 20N mobilisations, the same as always. The usual four cats and their five flags with chicken.
The only novelty of this ephemeris is that the "white-arsed" (humorous version of the Spanish national anthem from that period, which has no lyrics) popular man handed in his rucksack, comfortably in bed and surrounded by a legion of doctors, half a century ago. And we like round figures. They don't help to do quick maths.
Such commemorative headlines suit the media very well. There is no difference between the 49th, 50th or 51st anniversary of Franco's death, but the round date seems more historic. Some media present these "commemorations" as a simple formality and others indulge in the exaltation, glorification and romanticisation of Franco' s regime with more or less evident or veiled passion.
In the last decade there has been a certain routine in the editorial offices of the mass media, many of them supporters of"the culture of masses"(Perich dixit), which turns these dates into an excuse to invent currents that do not exist.
El País is among those media that some naive people still believe to be progressive (stop fooling yourselves, all the big "traditional" media are more right-wing than Superman's father). El País ranks high in inventing and/or promoting"trends" in many cases, based on two or three badly told anecdotes and in many other cases even baptising them with gilipollinglish names.
As an example, there you have the fucking classic of"coliving" which El País said was a "new trend" in 2019 (and much earlier) and in 2025 they present it again as a "new trend".
Coinciding with the anniversary of the half-century anniversary of the dictator's death, instead of doing a nice special on what four decades of dictatorship meant, they come out with this.
Source: El País
You might wonder what they mean by an "authoritarian regime". Well, stop asking because they illustrate it with a picture of "El Cerillita". If they intended to take a critical approach to this data, there is no trace of it in the headline. What surprises me is that they have not titled it "Franquismo, la nueva tendencia que causa furor entre la juventud" (Franquismo, the new trend that is causing a furore among young people).
"Young "nostalgics
When Franco died I was a child who was already lifting my chest above the oilcloth on the living room table. By the time of the 23F coup of 1981 I had already made more than one orchestral manoeuvre in the dark. What I remember most about that day is my grandparents, frightened, making evacuation plans and recalling things that seemed terrifying and that I barely understood. And if they were worrying like that, something bad was going on.
I grew up in that silly, thick and seemingly endless transition from Francoism to post-Francoism. Times full of lukewarm and not so lukewarm apologies. Without yet fully understanding those who dragged their fear along and decided "not to point the finger at each other". Shortly afterwards I understood that the sediment left by Francoism would not go away by opening the windows. Some shit was going to need decades of people convinced and determined to apply spatula and Zotal to get rid of it.
Decades later, Francoists are once again being called "nostalgic", as if to give them a sentimental, soft and revisionist patina. Even many piglets who do not want to listen to their elders, or delve into their history, are calling for oblivion. And that we continue to look the other way as an act of modernity while others believe that launching Francoist proclamations and playing the Cara al Sol in a silly Tik Tok video is the new "Punk".
All these kids, intoxicated by the hoaxes and "reactionary patriotic" bullshit of sympathisers, supporters or militants of the PP, VOX and other formations and satellite groups, who say that today we live in a dictatorship, I would have liked to have seen them living in one, deprived of their right to freedom of expression and of any other civil right and of all the hard-won social conquests we enjoy today.
Cursed be a thousand times all these sons of a thousand hyenas who contribute to whitewashing the figure of a murderer who got fed up with signing death sentences between siesta and siesta and who plunged the country into a deep pit of social and cultural backwardness that isolated us from the world.
To make fun of Franco, of his life, death, or any other action of rejection and contempt of Francoism is a fundamental right, we owe it to all those who could not do so in their day. Neither that nor anything else. It is a healthy exercise in the vindication of memory. Many of those people are still lying around in the gutter as a permanent reminder of one of the greatest disgraces in the history of our country.
But lest the faças at heart get upset, I must admit that the one who left it"all tied up and well tied up" did something right. The best, and only good thing he left us was his death. Late and in the most absolute impunity, more than enough reasons not to let even one of your bullshit apologies pass.
