Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco was a career Spanish army officer who rose rapidly through the colonial campaigns in Morocco and became one of the generals involved in the military uprising against the Second Spanish Republic in July 1936. During the Spanish Civil War he emerged as commander of the Nationalist forces and head of their political regime, receiving substantial military assistance from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

Nationalist victory in 1939 made Franco the authoritarian ruler of Spain. His regime executed and imprisoned large numbers of opponents, restricted political and cultural freedoms and remained in power through the Second World War and the Cold War. Economic and social policies changed substantially over the decades, but Franco retained supreme political authority until his death in 1975.

In Alexander Cordell’s To Slay the Dreamer, Franco is the intended target of an assassination plot involving a Spanish countess, an American killer and anti-Nationalist partisans. His leadership of the Nationalist cause supplies the novel’s central historical stakes during the Spanish Civil War.