Manuel Fraga, last minister from Spain’s Franco era, dies aged 89
Spain’s last Francoist minister, Manuel Fraga, died on Monday leaving the People’s party (PP)of the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, to mourn its founder.
Fraga’s ability to prosper in both dictatorship and democracy kept him in the limelight for almost half a century. He had recently stood down as a senator at the age of 89, and never lost his sharp tongue, nor his belligerent and sometimes authoritarian manner. “Homosexuality is an anomaly,” was a recent contribution to the debate on gay marriage.
Fraga refused to apologise for his role in General Francisco Franco’s governments, claiming Franco to have been the greatest Spaniard of the 20th century. Franco’s regime was not fascist but only authoritarian, he claimed.
Fraga was held up by some conservatives as proof that many regime figures were secret democrats obliged to compromise their ideals as they worked towards freeing Spain from its Francoist straightjacket.
“He characterised the path of the nation as it turned itself into a country of liberty,” Rajoy said today.
Fraga was a ferocious critic of the historical memory movement, which campaigns on behalf of Francoist victims and digs up mass graves.
“There was an amnesty here, which means both mutual pardon and mutual forgetting,” he said in a recent interview. “Amnesty means amnesia.” (via The Guardian)
mark: this is the context for the questionable photo i sent you yesterday.
