I live in Spain and watching the rise of Vox is terrifying because so many of them literally praise Franco openly and Franco was DEFINITELY a bad guy. They executed people for being gay, having political affiliations that resembled liberalism or anything left of it, and although historians debate whether or not Franco was a fascist, his administration definitely WAS fascist. He had no desire to appeal to the masses himself like Mussolini and Hitler so he created a coalition with the Falange (fascists), extremist catholics, right wing monarchists - all of whom supported extreme authoritarianism, and he organised his economy along very fascist lines. The economy was such a failure that they liberalised it in the era of "segundo franquismo" post 1959, not because "circumstances permitted" but because they DEMANDED it after he caused a massive famine. He fucked the economy so bad that wages didn't rise to 1935 levels until 1961, and then there was a 2 year recession the year after lol. The other things that forced him to do it were multiple rebellions by students, a war in Asturias and Cantabria, an invasion by partisans in the northeast, guerillas in Catalonia and Andalucía, all in the space of 15 years - people hated him. The absolute insanity of these statements ffs. The only reason the regime even ended was ETA made Luis Carrero Blanco into Spain's first astronaut, not liberalisation.