Francisco Franco Bahamonde has the dubious distinction of having held onto absolute power longer than any other European dictator of the first half of the 20th century. His 39 years of dictatorship, first as Nationalist supreme commander in the Civil War of 1936-9 and then as Caudillo - God-given leader - of Spain until his death in 1973, leave even his runner-up, Salazar of Portugal, well behind (32), and far outstrip his enemy Stalin (25) and his allies Mussolini (21) and Hitler, whose world-shaking career of war, genocide and destruction lasted a mere 12 years. Paul Preston's massive biography, on which he has worked for many years, is not, he writes in his Prologue, 'a history a 20th-century Spain nor an analysis of every aspect of the dictatorship, but rather a close study of the man'.

LRB 24 March 1994 | PDF Download