Growing up in the wake of the Spanish military’s shattering defeat at the hands of the United States in 1898 over Cuba and having survived a bullet to the stomach while serving his country in Morocco, it is perhaps no wonder that Francisco Franco’s fame and notoriety was eventually guaranteed by his ruthless pursuit of victory for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.

Franco played a major role on the world stage until his death in 1975. At once intensely sentimental and affecting cool indifference at times of bad news, he emphasised the need to obey orders, the importance of individual bravery, absolute loyalty to the Fatherland and the crucial role of the army. Variously courted by the liberal democracies of Britain and France, the Fascist alliance of Hitler and Mussolini and then by anti-communist administrations in Washington, the memory of his successful policies, leading to rapid growth during a time of economic depression, are tempered by his government’s extreme repression of political opponents and perpetration of mass violence during the White Terror.

In Franco, Michael Streeter explores the Generalissimo’s legacy as the subject of a cult of personality in one of Europe’s longest-lasting modern dictatorships and considers his genesis, his successes – decades of relative stability and prosperity during a period of great European conflict – and the terrible cost at which they came.