II.

Early Life and Military Career

Born in the northwestern Iberian coastal town of El Ferrol, Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde was the second son of a father who was a naval paymaster and a mother who was a devout Catholic. Due to her husband’s long absences, Franco’s mother took on many of the duties of rearing Francisco, his two brothers, and his sister. Her influence over the young Francisco was particularly profound, especially as a moral and intellectual guide.

Franco wanted to follow a family tradition by pursuing a career in the navy, but government cutbacks in the size of the naval officer corps pushed him in another direction. At age 14, he gained admission to Spain's premier military institution, the Infantry Academy at Toledo. For the next three years Franco acquired the skills then considered essential to a Spanish officer; apart from fencing, riding, and shooting, he spent long hours in the classroom absorbing the lessons of war theorists such as Prussian Karl von Clausewitz. Upon graduating in 1910, the 17-year-old Franco received his commission as a second lieutenant.

Franco grew up during a time when his country was experiencing a series of major crises. Foremost among them was Spain’s humiliating defeat in the Spanish-American War (1898). As a result, Spain lost the remnants of its once-global empire, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Such a profound blow to national pride prompted many Spaniards to blame the government for Spain’s rapid decline in world prestige.

Spurred on by the desire to recover its prestige, the government began to expand its involvement in Morocco. Spain had maintained a colonial presence in North Africa since the end of the 15th century. Due to indigenous rebellions and intrusions by foreign powers in the early 20th century, Spain’s government increased its military force in Morocco to protect its meager land holdings.

As part of this military buildup, Franco was assigned to a post in Morocco in 1912. At that time, Spain’s army was fighting to subdue the local Rif tribespeople. This gave Franco military experience. During his first tour of duty, which lasted until 1916, Franco quickly established himself as a brave and effective combat officer. In 1913 he won his first prestigious decoration, the Military Cross, and by 1917 his bravery and notable successes on the battlefield had earned him the rank of major.

Franco quickly rose through the military’s ranks, developing a lifelong reputation as an invincible fighter. After sustaining a near-fatal wound to the abdomen in 1916, for example, he defied the odds by making a fast recovery and returning to active duty. A posting back on the Spanish mainland interrupted his assignment in Morocco. From 1917 until 1920 Franco was stationed in Asturias in northern Spain, where he commanded the infantry battalion at the garrison in the region’s capital, Oviedo. There he began courting the daughter of a wealthy Asturian family, Carmen Polo y Martínez Valdés, whom he married in 1923.

Franco’s opportunity to return to combat came in late 1920, when he was reassigned to Morocco to help organize and command a new elite fighting force, the Tercio de Extranjeros (Spanish Foreign Legion). Over the next five years Franco once again distinguished himself as a military leader. By the time he left Morocco in 1926, Franco had become a brigadier general. At age 34, he was Europe's youngest general since French emperor Napoleon I.

During the years Franco was in Morocco, Spanish society had experienced major economic and political upheavals. Movements for regional autonomy had emerged in the Basque Country and Catalonia, and were seriously undermining the authority of the central government in Madrid. Spain's uneven progress in industrialization and the development of a capitalist economy had unleashed a variety of economic and social problems. In the cities, an increasingly restless working class had begun rebelling against harsh living conditions and exploitation by factory owners and businesspeople. In the countryside, the peasantry had begun struggling against an oppressive, semifeudal economic system that locked most peasants into a system of extreme poverty.

The stresses and strains brought on by these developments eventually overwhelmed the constitutional monarchy headed by King Alfonso XIII. The liberal government collapsed in September 1923 and was replaced by a military dictatorship headed by General Miguel Primo de Rivera. The early phase of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship brought an atmosphere of peace and prosperity. However, that atmosphere began to dissipate under the pressures being exerted by the social and political forces opposed to the regime. The onset of the worldwide economic depression of the late 1920s further eroded Primo de Rivera’s hold on power, and his rule came to an abrupt end early in 1930. In 1931 Alfonso XIII went into exile, and Spain’s Second Republic (the first had existed between 1873 and 1874) was established.