Abstract
Francoism is, without a doubt, one of the star issues of Spanish contemporary historiography. The output of works in the field has been enormous, and it continues to be a favoured topic of research. Paradoxically, this interest in the dictatorship coexists with a perception that a certain saturation point has been reached with works and research projects on Franco's regime, while other periods and topics have been relatively neglected. In this context, writing a synthesis of the almost four decades of Franco's regime could be both risky – because of the difficulty of gathering all the advances made in recent years – and also redundant – in that many aspects have been worked on previously.
The author, Nicolás Sesma, has met these two challenges and the result is a book of more than 700 pages that can be described as brilliant. Ni una, ni grande, ni libre is a masterpiece. It is masterfully written but entertaining and enjoyable to read, capable of attracting the attention of specialists and amateurs alike. In the introduction, Sesma makes the connection between Spain's traumatic past and the present situation, between history and memory. He does not shy away from some of the main historiographical debates on the regime, such as its political nature, and he advances a conception of Francoism that is becoming more and more prevalent, particularly in the new accounts of the dictatorship: that the regime should be understood as a dynamic historical subject which fluctuated and adapted to changing contexts. This new conception, although it complicates the categorization of Francoism, reveals a landscape rich in nuances and colours.
The book is structured into four thematic sections. The first deals with violence, often described as a pillar of the dictatorship. The author draws a polyhedron of violence that ‘was modulated according to the international and domestic situation’ (49); he analyses the forms, spaces and actors involved in the repression, situating it as an essential element in the birth of the dictatorship. He also pays attention to the rites of victory and offers a more realistic perspective on the social and political bases of the dictatorship, whose ideological differences, although they existed, were ‘indistinguishable’ in the eyes of Spanish society. The second section deals with the role of the Franco regime during World War II. With an excellent handling of primary sources, Sesma places the position in Spain within its international context. The result is an incisive overview of the dictatorship's own internal dynamics, with external perceptions of the Spanish situation and the Franco regime's own analysis of the decline of the fascist states.
The third section of the book explores the dictatorship's ability to adapt to the Cold War context, and examines the different mechanisms it used to guarantee its survival. This look at international relations is combined with a consideration of the interior of a backward Spain, where routine marked the daily life of the population. The main characteristic of Spanish society, as Sesma points out, was silence, ‘a silence installed in the country as a whole and practised by all’ (253). This was a nation full of contrasts, where the misery portrayed by the photographer Eugene Smith in the lands of Extremadura coexisted with a progressive distancing from the war, symbolized by the end of rationing, which officially put an end to the so-called ‘years of hunger’. Sesma depicts a hierarchical and structured regime that gave the impression of being accepted with resignation by the majority of Spaniards. Finally, the last section of the book focuses on the so-called ‘second Francoism’, where contrasts and paradoxes continued to be the most outstanding feature. The triumphalist rhetoric of the regime, supported by technocratic administration and the development of a consumer society, coexisted with generational transformations and an increase in social protest. As a result, the Francoist state began to show signs of exhaustion and proved incapable of ‘channelling social change through the narrow paths of the regime’ (423). As the voices in favour of political change from students, workers and even the Church grew louder, the regime responded with violence, and the apparently passive acceptance of the dictatorship turned into concern for the future and a desire for freedom.
Ni una, ni grande, ni libre is not merely a history of the Franco dictatorship. It is a meticulous, documented and up-to-date study of the regime and Spanish society. It intelligently addresses the intrigues and confrontations at the top of the dictatorship but does not neglect what happened in cities and towns. It dismantles the myths on which the regime based its permanence: the international isolation, the generalized economic progress during the desarrollismo, the modernization of Spain or the reforms that paved the way for democracy. Yet it also confirms some important issues of recent research on the social and cultural history of Francoism: that the dictatorship was more than fear and repression, that Franco was not just a lucky ruler and that Francoism, in spite of its personalized designation, was built ‘from below’ by ordinary Spaniards.