Dear Francisco,
I was born in 1962, so when you passed away I was 13 years old. The memory I have of the day of your death is that, being in 8th grade, there was a widespread feeling of deep pain. The only positive thing I experienced that Thursday, November 20, 1975, was that classes were suspended and I was spared a language exam for which I had not studied at all, a joy that I had to contain because I did not perceive the atmosphere as being conducive to jokes. Democracy shaped me and resonated with me, and I am now a convinced democrat and a firm opponent of dictatorships. I had the wonderful opportunity to grow up with freedom of thought, which made me analytical and critical.
I am writing this letter to thank you for some things and to reproach you for others, even knowing that some will criticize me for the acknowledgments, but, you know, this is one of the magnificent advantages of democracy: freedom of expression. Likewise, I am addressing you because at this moment you are trending topic, that is, you are in the eye of the information hurricane because they are going to exhume your remains buried in the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen, and although you did not determine that you would be buried there, that is what they did. By the way, you are going to be exhumed by a Government of Spain that has prioritized exhuming you as a matter of State, despite the fact that we are under brutal separatist blackmail and with a significant economic crisis looming. You are quite a smokescreen.
The first of the acknowledgments is for having saved us from falling into that dictatorship of the proletariat that the PSOE wanted to implement, a dictatorship that, remember, was intended to be a carbon copy of the one that already existed in Stalin's USSR. You did so in 1934 when the Second Republic commissioned you to do so, and you also did so, this second time motu proprio, in 1936 together with your fellow generals Sanjurjo, Queipo de Llano and Mola. Luckily you were successful, because if you had not been, Spain would have suffered the same sad fate as the USSR. The second of the acknowledgments is for having saved us from participating in World War II and to congratulate you on how you fooled Hitler in Hendaye. You managed to dodge him and did not give an inch to his strategic demands, which, had you capitulated, Spain would surely have been Nazi and the Third Reich would have had more options to get away with it. How curious that the foreign minister that the Führer took to the meeting in the Pyrenees was the same one who signed the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR with Stalin 14 months earlier; perhaps that was what increased your admirable caution. I also thank you for having had the sensitivity you had towards the working class by having legislated in favor of it and endowed it with rights as never before and as never after. That is why I affirm that you were an apolitical military man who applied socialist policies but who was always very clear about where socialism led and how communism struck; not in vain you had as a reference the disaster of the USSR, that of China and that of Yugoslavia; as well as you also had as a reference the hell to which two socialists as relevant as Mussolini and Hitler himself led their countries.
But I cannot avoid reproaching you for taking so long to leave power, in fact, you left it because you had no choice, and that was very bad. The vast majority of Spaniards understood, and understand, that your coup was better than the other possible one, that of the PSOE, which would have turned us into a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. That Republic was cursed and had only two exits, that of Largo Caballero-Stalin and yours. However, you could well not have subsequently believed yourself to be a divine designation to lead the destiny of the Spanish people and have allowed them at some point to lead it themselves. You could have made a transition piloted by you towards a Republic, taking advantage of the fact that the Monarchy had fled, voluntarily and shamefully, through the back door in April 1931, and you would have covered yourself in glory for all eternity. You dug in and lost perspective, when you could have been an indispensable saving option in 1936 and have restored democracy in 1964, for example. This reflection that I make to you after the fact should not surprise you; remember that your colleague General Queipo de Llano rose up in 1930 against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera with the aim of restoring democracy in the form of a Republic; and you yourself prolonged the Second Republic by saving it from the PSOE coup in 1934. You knew how to fight for democracy, you demonstrated it in Asturias, but you forgot.
In 2019, the Spanish judge you from the most complete ignorance regarding what was the dramatic and unsustainable situation in Spain, dragged on for decades, that you corrected; and not only do they judge you from ignorance, but with the ideological sieve of those who caused that barbarity, who are those who fortunately lost the civil war. In short, they are going to exhume you under the protection of a bastard law called "historical memory", as announced by the unspeakable current socialist president in the plenary of the General Assembly of the UN, that same plenary in which on November 21, 1975 all the delegates observed a minute of silence standing and with the flag of the United Nations at half mast, paying tribute to you.
Thank you for having loved Spain so much and for caring so much for the well-being of the Spanish people. Thank you again for having taken the rights of workers, the attention to the most disadvantaged and the protection of the family so seriously. And thank you for having saved us from the clutches of alienating communism and a thousand thanks, in short, for having placed Spain on the international stage, without unemployment or debt. I do not know if they will comply with the Law and give you State Honors when you are exhumed, although surely what you will be most ashamed of will be the role of the Catholic Church in forgetting that it was you who ended the indiscriminate murders of priests and nuns by the PSOE, PSOE that now harasses your memory for revenge, with the approval of the Vatican. You beat the socialists twice, you prevented them from imposing their dictatorship and you gave them a lesson with your countless socialist measures; they do not forgive you.
Continue to rest in peace.
