Overview
- Spain’s government has organized a 50th‑anniversary program under the banner “España en libertad,” drawing fierce criticism from the right and far right over its approach to historical memory.
- This week’s calendar includes a family‑backed mass for Franco on Thursday, a Falange march in Madrid on Friday, an antifascist demonstration on Saturday, and state ceremonies on Friday for the restoration of the monarchy that the ex‑king Juan Carlos will not attend.
- A recent poll reported that 21% of Spaniards view the Franco years as good or very good, as historians warn that weak instruction on fascism and social‑media narratives are shaping younger generations.
- The Sánchez government’s earlier steps—Franco’s 2019 exhumation from Cuelgamuros and a 2022 democratic memory law to register victims and remove Francoist symbols—remain central to the polarized dispute.
- Cultural output is intensifying the reckoning, with box‑office success for La cena, streaming retrospectives on the Transition and memory, and detailed journalistic reconstructions of Franco’s final 36 days.